I read the first book in this series (Oryx & Crake) nearly eight years ago, so it’s a good thing that this book is more a companion piece than a direct sequel. It returns to the same world and roughly the same time as O&C, but where that book explored that world through a man’s eyes, from inside the exclusive corporate bubbles, this one looks at it from the perspective of two women, who live out in the “real world”. Toby was raised in relative comfort, but circumstances derail her path and she finds herself working a low-wage retail job where she’s sexually abused by her boss. She escapes from his clutches with the help of the God’s Gardeners, a new religious movement focused on preserving what’s left of the natural world, and remains with the group first from a lack of anywhere else to go, and then from loyalty. One of the young people being raised within the group is Ren, whose mother brought her along when she left their cushy corporate home to run away with one of the group’s leaders, a man named Zeb. Though set in the time just after the plague has been unleashed on the world, the story is told largely through flashbacks, following both Toby’s and Ren’s lives with the Gardeners and what happens to them after they have separately left the group. I was, as ever, blown away with the power of Atwood’s imagination. So much of the way the world devolves feels heightened but not outside the realm of possibility, which makes it all the more haunting, and she develops the theology of the Gardeners with hymns and sermons from their leader, Adam One, in a way that feels realistic for something that would emerge in the context of the world she posits. After the maleness of O&C, the focus on Jimmy and Glenn (both of whom do show up in the narrative here in side roles), it’s refreshing to have Toby and Ren as narrators of The Year of the Flood, and the two women are both richly-drawn and compelling in their own ways. Atwood’s prose remains top-notch, I find her writing spellbinding in a way I find difficult to put my finger on but I get lost in so easily. There are some flaws here, most notably the way that several survivors manage to reconnect in a plague-decimated world in a way that defies probability, but the storytelling is too enjoyable otherwise to make that a fatal flaw. ( )

So nice to read a really good book again after a bunch of dissatisfying ones. ( )

Las predicciones de Adán Uno; líder de los Jardineros de Dios ?consagrados a la fusión de la ciencia y la religión; así como a la co nservación de la fauna y la flora?; se han hecho realidad; y el Diluvio Seco ha asolado el planeta y parece haber acabado con cualquier traza de vida humana. Entre los sobrevivientes de la gran catástrofe natural se encuentran Ren; una joven artista del trapecio encerrada en un distinguido club donde trabajan «las chicas malas más limpias de la ciudad»; y Toby; una mujer que se ha atrincherado en un balneario de lujo. Y mientras Ren y Toby deciden cuál será su siguiente paso; proliferan las nuevas especies transgénicas creadas por el hombre; que amenazan con destruirlo todo. La crítica ha dicho... ( )

"What am I living for and what am I dying for at the same time?"

'The Year of the Flood' is a continuation of, rather than a sequel or prequal of 'Oryx and Crake', Atwood herself described it as a 'simultanial'. Several characters from the earlier book appear, along with institutions such as 'God's Gardeners' and the security arm of the 'Corporations', 'CorpSeCorps'.

The Gardeners, are an eco-religious sect of organic farmers who farm rooftops, which can be defended from the marauding gangs who infest the streets outside their compounds. The Gardeners try to live in harmony with nature rather than rely on manufactured commodities. In contrast the Corporations control pretty well every facet of everyday life. As in the earlier book, all science and technology is Corporation-owned, and is employed in the service of furthering capitalist growth, destroying the resources and ecological balances of the planet in the process.

There is no given setting for this book but is probably either the American mid-west or Canada. The book opens in Year 25 when most of humanity have died and the few survivors are struggling for existence. Much of the novel takes place in flashbacks to as early as the Year Five, when things were bad, but not that bad yet.

Each section of this book opens with a sermon from Adam One and a hymn but the story is largely told from the viewpoint of two women, Toby and Ren. The two women are very different in both age and physique yet they also compliment each other with their very different experiences and life stories. The demise of mankind is consequently seen through the eyes of these two powerless women, whose individual characters, temperaments, loyalties and emotions are vivid and memorable. In contrast none of the male characters are developed at all; they play their roles nothing more.

The future that Atwood paints here is pretty bleak but believable. This book manages to fill in a few gaps and solving the cliff-hanger at the end of 'Oryx and Crake' but whilst I did enjoy reading it it wasn't as much as I enjoyed the original. I also feel that whilst 'O & C' would work well as a stand alone novel this book wouldn't. ( )

I enjoyed The Year of the Flood even better than Oryx and Crake. The story was exciting, and Atwood clearly had fun delving into the world of God's Gardeners, a loopy but likable band of eco-Christians whose theology seems to have been lifted from a Dr. Bronner's soap label (though with better lyrics).

(The God's Gardeners surprise us, too—they begin as loving satire, but their earnest sermons and hymns become increasingly pointed and moving. This novel is one very good answer to the question of how to write fiction in the age of climate change.)

Atwood did a clever job nesting the plot of this book around Oryx & Crake. I loved the idea that while Jimmy is spiraling into his existential haze, quite different stories are happening. Yet I wasn't crazy about Ren's character development being dependent on the scaffolding of the previous novel—her obsession with Jimmy felt a little too neat, a literary flourish rather than an integral part of the story. ( )