The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
- Method of Obtaining: I obtained my copy via my local library.
- Published by: Knopf Doubleday
- Release Date: 9.22.2009
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The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God’s Gardeners—a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life—has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God’s Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible.
Have others survived? Ren’s bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers . . .
Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo’hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can’t stay locked away . . .
By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive.
I also recommend:
- On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchett
- The People of the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
A good novel dealing with a theme of dystopia should have elements of truth that make what the reader is experiencing in the pages something that is not that far out of reach. Forget about the exaggerations and complicated science that the common reader won’t understand – instead, speak to something that they know. Incorporate hymns, familiar passages of religious text, and expand on the desires of people who are living in the real world, here and now.
Then twist it all into something so scary it shocks that same reader into thinking, “Oh my … this COULD happen.”
That’s good dystopia. And Margaret Atwood captures all of that perfectly in The Year of the Flood, a follow-up companion novel to her brilliant Oryx and Crake. Switching gear from Snowman-Jimmy and the Crakers, Atwood moves to study the lives of God’s Gardeners, a cultish group of people who are clinging to the organic, natural way of life.
I really struggled at times with this book because I felt as if the God’s Gardeners should be people I should be afraid of – a cult that twists and perverts religion much like those portrayed in the news today. But yet, I could not disagree with their fundamental beliefs because I hated what was happening in the world around them and its similarities to our world today. And that inner struggle as I read is what made me love this book so much. I had to think about what it was I disliked, what made me uncomfortable, and what exactly I agreed with and then pinpoint where things went wrong in the book and where they went right.
And that, folks, is why Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors. I love reading a book that makes me work and, when I finish, leaves me mentally exhausted.
The conclusion to this trilogy is due out soon, so I re-read Oryx and Crake and read The Year of the Flood for the first time in preparation for the release of MaddAddam. You can bet I am looking forward to the conclusion and dreading it at the same time because what else could I look forward to with as much eager anticipation and dread!
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