** spoiler alert ** 
 The last volume in the trilogy. 
 One of Atwood's gifts in speculative fiction, or social science fiction, or whatever you want to call it, is taking a negative trend and extrapolating it out to its most plausible yet terrifying extreme. This was the case in The Handmaid's Tale with political and religious misogyny, and for Oryx and Crake with pollution and rudderless use of biotechnology. 
 Here is something that started off a bit more distant than that. Some of the surviving characters from the second book in the trilogy seem oddly flat in their world of survival. They seem static, distant, and disaffected (although maybe that's the effect of reading it immediately after Middlemarch?), and their backstories and flashbacks seem a bit dry. Long stretches of the middle were a bit unsatisfying. 
 However, the end was a bit more sensitive and tender, and it provided something like a sense of hope and closure in this new world. It is a good tragedy, and the end of the world comes with music and flowers. 
 Let us sing. Thank you. Good night.