parallel story to Oryx and Crake - not sure I liked this one as much. Her imagination is frightfully good though. ( )

Summary: In a dystopian future, companies control the world and environmental disaster is widespread. The God’s Gardeners are a religious group that respond by abstaining from meat and living as green as they can. Toby is one such Gardener, snatched from the grasp of sexual abuse. Ren is another Gardener, a child growing up in the community. But as the Waterless Flood draws close, both Toby and Ren find their lives changing in ways they did not expect.

Review: First off, I have to offer an apology to the Kingston Public Library for accidentally smearing the spine of the pages with Nutella. Sorry! Do not be alarmed. The brown stain is food.

As for the book itself, I was really excited to read The Year of the Flood because it’s a companion to Oryx and Crake, which I read several years ago and enjoyed. The world that Atwood builds in these novels is dangerous and slightly absurd, but all the technology is based on real research that’s going on, so perhaps the scary thing is that her future isn’t so impossible after all. But Atwood is great at creating these whole-scale worlds. I remember the fantasy world she created in The Blind Assassin that really made an impression on me too.

The Year of the Flood isn’t an action book. There isn’t much that goes on because the climatic events, the Waterless Flood (which is really the wipeout brought about Crake, aka Glenn) doesn’t happen until near the end. Instead it’s about Toby and Ren and their experience with the God’s Gardeners as well as the slums that surround it. It’s an intimate portrait of two women in a religious “cult” (if you want to define the Gardeners as such), and an examination of how people try to make meaning in times where there seems to be no meaning, only brutality and dehumanization.

It’s not necessarily my favourite Atwood book. I feel that the end is a bit loose and I would have loved to have seen more of Toby and Zeb. And less of Jimmy — Ren’s interactions with him aren’t that integral in the story, and the only reason Jimmy pops up so much is because he was the main character of Oryx and Crake. I could have done without that forced overlap between the two books. But still. This is Margaret Atwood and I would give her my soul if she asked nicely.

Conclusion: A harsh but tender dystopian novel. ( )

Please note: There are mild spoilers in this review.

The Year of the Flood is not a sequel to Atwood’s dystopian novel Oryx and Crake, but rather a companion to it. It takes place at the same time and depicts the same events, with many of the same characters, but from a very different perspective. Atwood’s vision of our future is of a bleak, corporatized monoculture, where everything has been made into a commodity, and human emotions all but done away with. Guarded, gated corporate-states churn out useless genetically engineered animals and unnecessary drugs while the poor eke out an existence in the vast malls and slums of the “pleeblands.” Then, a bioengineered virus pretty much wipes out humanity overnight, leaving only a few survivors to relate the two tales. Eventually, the two storylines merge, shedding light on the abrupt end of Oryx and Crake. Although it is not strictly necessary, I believe it would help the reader understand The Year of the Flood after already having read Oryx and Crake.

The narrative alternates between the points of view of the two main characters, Toby and Ren. Each woman is telling her story post-apocalypse, first relating a little of how she managed to survive, then flashing back to the events of her life before the virus swept through. Both begin their stories as members of the anti-consumerist cult God’s Gardeners (which also appeared in Oryx and Crake), but each has to leave the group for different reasons, and their storylines separate. Each section, alternating Toby and Ren, begins with a sermon given by Adam One, the leader of God’s Gardeners, followed by a hymn commemorating one of the cult’s saint days (there is one for every day). These sermons let the reader know the fate of the group after Toby and Ren leaves and the apocalypse, which they call the “Waterless Flood,” occurs. Eventually, Toby’s and Ren’s stories catch up to the present and converge as the two separated characters come together again.

Toby and Ren are both victims of the commoditized, dysfunctional world they inhabit. They are each left without means of support after their fathers die in spectacularly unpleasant circumstances and they are abruptly on their own. They start out as victims: Toby of a psychotic rapist who continues to pursue her after her escape into God’s Gardeners; Ren of her mother’s capriciousness, until she winds up working in a sex club. After the Waterless Flood, they must each overcome their victimhood and become self-sufficient. They discover how to be themselves. In fact, the apocalypse might have been the best thing to ever happen to them, as it releases them from their societally imposed prisons.

The Year of the Flood ends much as Oryx and Crake did, with the focal characters encountering a mysterious group in the deserted forest. As in Oryx and Crake, the ending is very abrupt and a trifle unsatisfying, which leads me to believe that Atwood — although disavowing her role as a science fiction writer — is writing in the great tradition of the science fiction trilogy. If so, I eagerly await the last installment. ( )

The Year of the Flood takes place in the same dystopian landscape as Oryx and Crake, a plague-infested environment which has self-destructed partly as a result of gluttonous consumerism of natural resources and partly as a deliberate bio-terrorist attack as a protest to the former. Only a few people survived the plague; among them are two former God's Gardeners: Toby, an unshakable mother figure with extensive knowledge of plants and herbs, and Ren, a sweet but naive former exotic dancer who has latched onto her.

And although Toby and Ren are the book's protagonists and narrators, their characters are not what lingered in my mind after finishing. The environmentalism itself is provocative and scary, and while the dystopian self-destruction of the environment is an exaggeration of the plot, really, I don't think we're too far off. Ultimately the book ends up as a plea for conscientious utilization of natural resources, rather than the careless exploitation toward which we are currently trending. ( )

A parallel story to Oryx and Crake, this time taking place mostly in the pleeblands among outlaws and dissenters. It’s somehow more human, as we meet people who are struggling to survive in their daily life, as opposed to the comfy and totally artificial life of the corporation compounds. We meet everyone from Oryx and Crake again, even if for a short while, but it’s very interesting as we see them from a completely different perspective.
Atwood's style has never been better. And she definitely knows about little girls- some masterful portrayals there. ( )