The Year of the Flood

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

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 show more 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. show less

A book that was even better than the fabulous Oryx and Crake that preceeded it. The Year of the Flood is a much different book, but it is still amazing. This one focuses more on religion than science, but it still casts back a mirror for us and our society to examine ourselves.

Atwood seems to be writing with absences in this series. In the broken world full of broken people, she does not construct a vision of virtues or what a beautiful life look like. Instead, she uses what is broken about people and society to construct an artwork that is beautiful in and of itself, but also reveals the ideal in its absences, negative space, and between the lines.

I don't know if I'm up to the task of critiquing the craft she employs, so I'll limit show more this review to just appreciating it. Damn, but that woman can write a novel. Respect. show less

I read the previous book, 'Oryx and Crake', in 2006, and my memory of it was pretty fuzzy. I recalled not liking it all that well, so I didn't feel very motivated to re-read it to prepare for this sequel. I generally love Atwood, which is why I bought the sequel anyway. I liked this one a lot! Damn, she's dark and funny. The books are set in a dystopian future, where corporations are much stronger than the government. If you are a professional working for a big corporation, you live in a gated community. If you aren't, you struggle to survive in the pleeblands.

'Oryx and Crake' is told from the point of view of privileged young men -- the children of scientists working for corporations. One of them is a genius, and ends up with his own show more well-funded research project. He claims to be on human aging, but he's actually doing something quite different. He creates the next stage of the human race, one that is nonviolent and easy on the environment, and creates a plague that attacks only homo sapiens.

'The Year of the Flood' is told from the point of view of people in the Gardeners, a religious and ecological cult that renounced consumerism and the corporations, and which looks forward to the 'second flood' that will cleanse the world the way that Noah's flood did. The Gardeners are much more entertaining than the boy scientist. The narration flips back and forth between Toby and Ren. Toby is wise and cynical. Ren is naive and sweet. You see the Gardeners before the plague, and after it. They are a amusing bunch, pious, head-in-the-clouds and then shatteringly pragmatic. They keep a religious calendar of saints' days, and the (brief) sermons that appear periodically always open with some thoughts on that day's saint (and a description of the crafts that the children have done to honor the saint). Some of the saints you'll recognize from the Catholic list, others not so much:
Saint E. O. Wilson of Hymenoptera
Saint Farley Mowat of Wolves
Saint Robert Burns of Mice

One of the things that the Gardeners do is find a safe new identity for people who want to get out of the corporate world. An example of Atwood's snark: 'The ratio of women to men fleeing the Corporations was roughly three to one. Nuala said it was because women were more ethical, Zeb said it was because they were more squeamish, and Philo said that it amounted to the same thing.' show less

Margaret Atwood's new novel is set in the same imaginary space as Oryx and Crake but told from the point of view of a minor character in the first book and of a senior member of the religious group "Gods Gardeners," mentioned only in passing in the first book. The Year of the Flood gives a rounder, fuller view of the imaginary but plausible future that Atwood has created for us. Having read Oryx and Crake first, it was easier for me to follow, although I think it would be a less confusing read, even without knowing the basic premise from the start.

Atwood has extrapolated on climate change, genetic engineering, privatization of government functions and corporate irresponsibility and immunity, all trends we can see today, to create the show more distopian future of The Year of the Flood. Her two narrators are Ren, the former girlfriend of Jimmy, aka Snowman from Oryx and Crake and Toby, a senior member of God's Gardeners.

Gods Gardeners are an eco-religious communal group, growing there own food in a rooftop garden on top of one of the buildings they occupy in the middle of the urban chaos of a "plebe," the word Atwood uses to describe a city outside of the walled and gated communities where the wealthy corporate executives live, under the protection of CorpSeCorps, the Corporate Security Corps, which has become the privatized police, army, courts and prison administration of Atwood's unnamed future nation.


In the future world Atwood has created, large corporations, many of them in the business of bio-engineering, run everything. These corporations are answerable to no one. They create and spread new diseases in order to sell the cures they have made for them. They build new creatures, combining the genetic materials of different species. Many technologies of energy efficiency are used, but were unsuccessful in reversing the trend of global warming. Solar provides the electricity for many building which are off the grid, biomass is rendered to make a petroleum substitute. Organized crime is rampant in the plebelands and regularly uses these rendering devices to dispose of bodies, or just takes their saleable organs and leaves them in a vacant lot.

Atwood goes to some length fleshing out God's Gardeners, their theology and rituals, including the words to hymns, which end each chapter. There is a CD of these songs available through Atwood's website. One amusing aspect is their saints days. Like Roman Catholicism, Gods Gardeners structure their calendar around a list of saints. Francis of Assisi is one, but most are people like Rachel Carson, Al Gore and Jacques Cousteau. Euell Gibbons gets a whole week.

Through the stories told by Ren and Toby, Atwood fills in the missing parts of Oryx and Crake. We learn that there is a connection between God's Gardeners and MaddAdam, the online game/eco-terrorist group and that Glenn/Crake, who formed MaddAdam and created the plague, known to the Gardeners as the Waterless Flood, was inspired by the Gardener's doomsday prophecy to create the plague and the genetically altered post-humans that he believes should inherit the Earth from us.

The end of The Year of the Flood coincides with the end of Oryx and Crake, leaving Toby, Ren, Ren's friend Amanda a couple of sociopathic criminals and a colony of blue bellied post-humans to fend for themselves. How will society evolve from here? Is Atwood so enamored of this particular distopia that she would write a trilogy? Perhaps she means to leave it up to the reader's imagination. It would be nice to know what happens next in the lives of the well crafted characters left stranded on the beach at the end, but I think that the speculative propositions presented in the two books have been played out. Going further, to see whether traditional humans or the new blue-bellies will inherit the Earth, or perhaps the pigoons, would be a venture too far into science fiction for Margaret Atwood's taste. show less

Adam One, the leader of the quasi-religious eco-cult caller God's Gardeners, had long predicted the coming of a plague, a Waterless Flood that would destroy all human life and as the story begins, it seems that he has been proven right.
We meet our two heroines, the older, tougher Toby and Ren, a worker in an upscale sex club. Both find themselves, through peculiar circumstances, still alive after what turns out to be a bio-engineered virus sweeps through. In the midst of the horror of the dead, each wonders if they are only person alive and yet also fearing who else, what else, might be out there.

As the story progresses, the chapters move back and forth in time and we learn how these two women came to be where they are. Society, in this show more future that Atwood speculates about, is bizarre and disturbing, maybe most of all because it is not totally unbelievable. There appears to be no government. The Corporations and their brutal security force, the CorpSEcorps, control the more upscale compounds where science and technology and 'progress' have become the new gods, resulting in all sorts of lovely bio-engineered creatures. Like the cross between a lion and lamb..you know the whole lion lays down with the lamb idea...that looks so cute and fuzzy...until they rips your throat out. Or the pig with a human brain. Ok, there have been some problems with some of the experiments.

Outside the compounds you have the pleeblands, violent and lawless, where the cultish God's Gardeners reside yet attempt to rise above it all. Both figuratively and literary, since they live on rooftops, easier to defend, raising their gardens and preaching and planning how to survive the flood that will soon come. We learn the backstories of Toby and Ren, both at times dreadful, sad stories, both tied to the God's Gardeners, and both, in their own ways, showing us how they became survivors. Because that is what they both are, survivors. And in the later part of the book we explore, if not totally resolve, what being a survivor in this new world, this world after the Flood, may mean.

Without question, Atwood writes from a certain ideological point of view and if you have read my reviews before, you might have noticed that I hate a heavy handed, preachy novel. Especially if the views it is preaching differs from my own...lol. But happily, Atwood is a much better writer than that. Everyone, every view, to some degree, is subjected to Atwood's witty and often very amusing treatment. Because yes, this book, while often violent and even gross, is also often very funny and witty. And ultimately, she wraps it all into what I found to be a quite entertaining and compelling story. Also a story with some great characters. A well written, engaging plot, some well defined, affecting characters and the exploration of some interesting questions, all makes for a book that I totally enjoyed. She creates a disturbing and thought provoking image of a future, an image that may well remain with out after you have finished enjoying this entertaining book. 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