The Year of the Flood

**update**
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ ORYX AND CRAKE FIRST. The Year of the Flood is not a sequel even though goodreads lists it as Maddadam trilogy #2. It's more like a completely different story about the same event. There is hardly any character crossover and absolutely zero information in Oryx and Crake that you need to love/enjoy/understand The Year of the Flood.

I love that this story just dumps me off in the future. Lots of things aren’t explained. It’s written as if I already know what a "violet biolet" is and have seen "Mo-Hairs" on people on the street all my life. I liked it. It made for a sort of culture shock that gave me a nice distance from this harsh new world.

I've grown fearful of reading Margaret Atwood over the past show more few years. I adore her writing but the characters can be so awful to each other and the stories can be painful and depressing. They can make me loathe the human race and that's not me. I actually like human beings and I truly believe we're made to be good. So I was beyond pleased that this book features sweet characters with faith and heart who care for each other and their world. And Bonus!! There was just a modicum of girl-on-girl betrayal. (And really, she did have it coming.)
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Margaret Atwood, you genious Canadian oldtimer.

'The Year of the Flood' is the second instalment in the so-called 'MaddAddam' trilogy. The first part, [b:Oryx and Crake|46756|Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam Trilogy, #1)|Margaret Atwood|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327896599s/46756.jpg|3143431], featured a very plausible end-of-the-world story in which medical corporations and science have taken over the world. And while 'The Year of the Flood' is not exactly a sequel, it does pay off to have read the first instalment (which is quite magnificent in its own right.)

This time around, there are two main characters, Ren and Toby, resulting in a greater variety of scenery and a story that has a lot to offer. I thoroughly enjoyed the religious show more aspect of the novel, focusing around a group of eco-friendly hippies on steroids that have actually correctly predicted the end of the world, or as they call it the 'Waterless Flood'. It would be wrong, however, to single out this aspect of the novel. Atwood (again) proves herself a great storyteller, who can -seemingly without even trying too hard- present an enthralling story. This is as close to a blockbuster as you're going to get in Literature County.

With the third instalment of the trilogy, 'MaddAddam', arriving in the fall of this year, it's only fair to say we've got something to look forward to. show less

The Short of It:

This is the second book in a trilogy. Much easier to consume than book one due to its difficult content.

The Rest of It:

Atwood is such a force. She’s created this world where everything has gone to hell and man, it’s so fitting for our times.

In this installment, we learn more about the different communities that resulted after the pandemic that took the world by storm. There are Gardeners, extreme Vegans who grow their food on rooftops and the worst of the worst, the folks that have been imprisoned and escaped only to cause havoc in a land without protection.

In this installment, we learn more about the Crakers, who were introduced in Oryx and Crake. These people are a mild people who live their lives happily, often show more singing, and procreating. Yep. They are bio-engineered and when the women are ripe, they turn blue which signals the Crakers to gather with their swinging blue appendages (take a guess here) and then a foursome is chosen to continue the human race. This is a bizarre practice and wild to read about.

While the Crakers are running around singing and carrying on, the Gardeners find themselves a target because of their resiliency and food supply that others so desperately want. Plus, it’s a lawless society. Women are taken and abused repeatedly and often left for dead. The Gardeners are forced to move in order to save their own.

In this installment, we begin to see the origins of Oryx and Crake. How Oryx created all the animals, including the violent Pigoons, but are they really violent, flesh eating creatures or are they too, just trying to survive? Crake’s power is explored but the idolatry that folks had for him begins to crack as people come together and share their own stories of the land before.

The Year of the Flood really solidified my love for Atwood. As soon as I finished, I immediately picked up book three, MaddAddam. I should have that review up soon.

Highly recommend if you can get through book one, Oryx and Crake. You must read these books in order or you will be lost.

For more reviews, visit my blog: Book Chatter. show less

A companion piece, not properly a sequel, to Oryx and Crake. It covers the same period of time, seen from other characters’ perspectives. We see the same dystopic future and subsequent apocalypse from the point of view of God’s Gardeners, the religious sect that Jimmy’s mother ran away and purportedly joined in Oryx and Crake. The point of view alternates between that of Toby and Ren, whose stories intertwine and overlap with those of other characters from Oryx and Crake. Toby and Ren are far more sympathetic characters than Jimmy/Snowman, making this version of the story a touch more sentimental and a touch less sardonic. While Oryx and Crake focused more on the breakdown of human society, The Year of the Flood offers more in the show more way of the breakdown of the natural world.

Atwood is, as ever, a sharp observer of human nature, both our better angels and our worse demons. And as ever, she offers us a dim view of the future tempered by small grains of hope.

Should this be a 5-star read? I think it might be, except that Oryx and Crake has lived so long in my heart that it would be difficult for me to rate anything similar quite as high. show less

It was time for some Margaret Atwood in my life, so I picked this up, the second in her MaddAddam trilogy. Set in a dystopian future, where we have destroyed the environment and everything is owned by giant corporations, The Year of the Flood centers around a small group of religious environmentalists. Which should make for a boring, worthy book because who wants to read about smelly people wearing hemp and raising their own mushrooms while singing hymns to the insects, am I right? But, of course, this is Atwood we're dealing with and she is up for the task. The story is centered on two women; Ren, who grew up in the Gardener sect and Toby, who was rescued by them and who remained although she always planned to leave. The world the show more Gardeners live in is a lawless urban landscape, where the security forces are as much to be feared as the violent gangs. But they are able to carve out a small, functional utopia of a sort, at least until the waterless flood comes.

Seriously, Atwood can make any book riveting. I dislike preachiness is novels, even when I agree with it and The Year of the Flood prefaces each chapter with a prayer/sermon followed by a hymn. And I couldn't put it down despite the sometimes overly clear message. Both Toby and Ren are fascinating characters and it's especially interesting in the differences between how they see themselves and how they see each other. I look forward to continuing the story in MaddAddam, but first I'd like to go back and reread Oryx and Crake while this book is still fresh in my mind. show less

You can forget who you are if you're alone too much.

In [b:Oryx and Crake|46756|Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)|Margaret Atwood|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1494109986s/46756.jpg|3143431], Jimmy/Snowman slowly remembers who he is, as part of his remembering how civilization ended. The Year of the Flood isn't a sequel, but a retelling of those same events from the perspective of two women, both once members of a cult/religious order/resistance group called God's Gardeners. Ren and Toby have survived inside the places they lived and worked: Ren locked inside a quarantine room at a sex club, Toby barricaded inside an upscale spa. Like O&C, the present tense begins after the gruesome plague engineered by Crake/Glenn has wiped out most show more of human population of Earth, while flashbacks tell of the events leading up to the end of the world as we know it.

I'm not sure if Ms. Atwood planned to write a trilogy when she first penned O&C, but retelling the same story from a different perspective works so well here. I actually enjoy this second novel more than the first, but I think reading the first contributed to my enjoyment of this one. Jimmy is meh in his own story and becomes even more pathetic when seen through the eyes of the women. And this story is made so much richer by the story of God's Gardeners and their charismatic leader, Adam One, whose sermons and hymns punctuate the novel.

According to Adam One, the Fall of Man was multidimensional. The ancestral primates fell out of the trees; then they fell from vegetarianism into meat-eating. Then they fell from instinct into reason, and thus into technology; from simple signals into complex grammar, and thus into humanity; from firelessness into fire, and thence into weaponry; and from seasonal mating into an incessant sexual twitching. Then they fell from a joyous life in the moment into the anxious contemplation of the vanished past and the distant future.

We dangle by a flimsy thread,
Our little lives are grains of sand:
The Cosmos is a tiny sphere
Held in the hollow of God's hand.

Give up your anger and your spite,
And imitate the Deer, the Tree;
In sweet Forgiveness find your joy,
For it alone can set you free.

So read Oryx and Crake first, but then read this, because it's even better and ties everything together (perhaps a little too conveniently, but it's a novel). Just don't get your hopes too high for the final installment, [b:MaddAddam|17262203|MaddAddam (MaddAddam, #3)|Margaret Atwood|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1366394020s/17262203.jpg|17613051]. show less

If a religious sect predicts an apocalyptic event and then separates itself to start preparing for that cataclysm, the general public pretty much shakes its collective head and writes them off as whackos. But are they still whackos if they turn out to be right?

In The Year of the Flood, Atwood takes us inside a religious sect on the fringes of the mainstream (albeit a very fragile, last-days-of-the-Roman-Empire kind of mainstream), and pretty much asks the reader just that question. Those on the outside think God's Gardeners are crazy or dangerous or both. From our insider perspective, it's those on the outside who seem crazy and dangerous.

Or maybe I just think that because I found myself agreeing with a surprising amount of the show more Gardeners' theology. It's a hodge-podge of Christianity, Buddhism, and a religious reverence for science, but it kind of works for me. I like the idea of learning to be self-sufficient, of using just what we need and no more, of fostering compassion and respect for all creatures. I like, too, that while the Gardeners have very strong beliefs, they're also pragmatic. For example, they don't believe in eating meat, but they are okay with it if it's a matter of life and death (for them) and if they do it mindfully.

I liked the combination of science and religion in the Gardeners' worldview, and their focus on mindfulness and empathy. In particular, I liked the idea that it's not just the creatures we think of as gentle that are God's children. Wolves, lions, spiders: they're every bit as much God's children as humans are. There's also the suggestion that even "evil" people---mass murderers, serial killers---are God's children, and we should deal with them with compassion and empathy, a view with which I agree and for which I've been shouted at by people in my own otherwise compassionate and touchy-feely religion. But then, not even all of the Gardeners agree on how one should deal with a person who means us harm, which is the cause of significant disagreement within the sect.

I also really enjoyed the hope that the Gardeners maintained in the face of the cataclysm they saw coming. They didn't know what form it would take exactly, but they knew something bad was going to happen and instead of becoming fatalistic, they prepared for it.

Basically, I really loved this book. It was well-written and I loved that it's told from the perspective of two female characters (and Adam One's sermons). The only reason I'm not giving it five stars is because it's left me feeling a little paranoid. The Gardeners see danger everywhere, and that helps them stay safe. In light of the fictional situations Atwood presents (which are uncomfortably close to reality), I'm looking at the things that raise flags for me in my life and wondering which ones actually pose a threat and which ones don't. I tend to note potential dangers and then dismiss them, and I'm wondering if I'm too complacent about the negative influence these elements have on my spiritual self and their potential dangers to my material self.

What harm can it do to hook into Facebook or Twitter or Gmail (or Goodreads)? What's the danger of owning a cell phone or putting a transponder in your car to automatically pay road and bridge tolls? Sure, it's all huge corporations (and a highly corporate-influenced government) mining our data and monitoring our internet and calling histories, but the alternative is to drop out completely, and that's just not practical. (Plus, it's only the bad guys who get caught, so I have nothing to fear.) That coffee isn't shade-grown, that chocolate's not fairly traded, there's corporate advertising in our public schools, and that diamond engagement ring was almost certainly mined with slave labor, but those are just side effects of a free market. What we do as individuals doesn't make a difference, so it's okay to just keep on drinking mochas and watching reality television. Still concerned? Here, have some BlyssPluss, and you'll feel much better.

Now I need to go back and re-read [b:Oryx and Crake|46756|Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam Trilogy, #1)|Margaret Atwood|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327896599s/46756.jpg|3143431] and eagerly anticipate the publication of [b:MaddAddam|46756|Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam Trilogy, #1)|Margaret Atwood|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327896599s/46756.jpg|3143431]. And maybe throw out my nutritional supplements and buy the audio CD of the Gardeners' hymns. show less