HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Loading...

The Year of the Flood (2009)

by Margaret Atwood

Other authors: See the other authors section.

Series: MaddAddam Trilogy (2)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
7,1523601,238 (3.92)640
Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. Science Fiction. HTML:NATIONAL BESTSELLER â?˘ From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testamentsâ??the second book of the internationally celebrated MaddAddam trilogy, set in the visionary world of Oryx and Crake, is at once a moving tale of lasting friendship and a landmark work of speculative fiction.

The long-feared waterless flood has occurred, altering Earth as we know it and obliterating most human life. Among the survivors are Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, who is barricaded inside a luxurious spa. Amid shadowy, corrupt ruling powers and new, gene-spliced life forms, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move, but they can't stay locked
… (more)
  1. 250
    Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (haeji)
  2. 190
    The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (smiteme)
  3. 60
    Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (DCBlack)
  4. 52
    The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (souloftherose)
    souloftherose: Another novel about a dystopian future with strong environmental themes.
  5. 30
    A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (Anonymous user)
  6. 30
    MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood (Philosofiction)
  7. 22
    Epitaph Road by David Patneaude (eenerd)
    eenerd: Another interesting look into bio/eco-warfare fallout.
  8. 11
    Shelter by Susan Palwick (wifilibrarian)
    wifilibrarian: Covers these similar themes near future, ecological collapse, eco-christian religion, female main characters, families and friendships.
  9. 00
    Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (sturlington)
  10. 01
    The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (Niecierpek)
  11. 45
    The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (hbsweet)
  12. 23
    Pure by Julianna Baggott (eenerd)
  13. 01
    A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle (JuliaMaria)
    JuliaMaria: Dystopien bzgl. kommender Umweltkatastrophen
  14. 02
    The Prepper Room by Karen Duve (JuliaMaria)
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 640 mentions

English (346)  Catalan (6)  Finnish (3)  Spanish (2)  Dutch (2)  Norwegian (1)  German (1)  Danish (1)  Swedish (1)  All languages (363)
Showing 1-5 of 346 (next | show all)
This was really a 2 1/2 stars. It might even be a three but honestly I was so disappointed in the book it left me bewildered. It was just no where near as good as the first one. It was also filled with a lot of old themes. I have read a lot of science fictions books that covered this subject and felt way more unique. I am guessing this book will be fine for others but reading it so soon after the first one it felt hollow. ( )
  cdaley | Nov 2, 2023 |
Interesting, thought-provoking and disturbing. Not nearly as good as Oryx and Crake, and definitely should be read after the same. This dystopian world book is a powerful, skillfully written commentary on our current experiences. ( )
  lschiff | Sep 24, 2023 |
It's hard to fairly review The Year of the Flood -- [b:Oryx and Crake|46756|Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)|Margaret Atwood|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327896599s/46756.jpg|3143431] is a masterpiece, which will be celebrated as a timeless classic in the genre. The Year of the Flood is...not. It's not bad, but it's a far cry from Oryx and Crake.
The beginning of the book, for me, was the best -- I liked how Atwood fleshed out the religion of God's Gardeners, and especially liked that she primarily narrated from the point of view of Toby, who herself was cynical towards the religion. I thought it leant interesting insight into the idea of deeds-based religion versus faith-based religion, using a fictional religion to showcase the concepts. The religion itself was interesting: an attempt to merge high-level evolution and science, environmentalism and Judeo-Christian thought. I thought overall Atwood balanced the components well, and made the religion both compelling and flawed, which I appreciated.

I like the main characters as well, Atwood is at her best creating nuanced female characters, and Toby is one of my favorite protagonists. Atwood relaly allows her characters to grow and evolve over the course of the novel, in a way that is very unusual and very enjoyable to read.

The second half of the book, where it starts to overlap with the events in Oryx and Crake is rockier on several dimensions. First and most problematic is that Atwood makes the choice to recount overlapping events, but to do so summarily and tersely. This disrupts the flow of the novel and makes it read, in places, almost like Cliff Notes for its predecessor. The second problem is that there are multiple coincidences that end up tying together the protagonists from Year of the Flood with Oryx, Crake and Jimmy. These are far too frequent to be credible. I'm not sure if Atwood is making a narrative point by mashing the characters together in multiple ways, or if it's lazy writing. It's rare for me to find Atwood lazy, so I suspect the former, but if she's making a point, I didn't get it.

Finally, I think there's an uncomfortable line here between futuristic dystopia that plays on modern themes and conspiracy-mongering. I found Oryx and Crake to be firmly in the former camp, commenting on modern issues such as corporation rights and the growing class divide through the lens of dystopian fiction, while the Year of the Flood seems to be uncomfortable close to the latter, suggesting that no one should take pharmaceuticals because of Big Pharma or trust the government in any way. And while I agree with the first set of themes, the extension in Year of the Flood is one that happens by many people in real life today and I think it's counterproductive, so reading this thinly fictionalized account was uncomfortable.

( )
  settingshadow | Aug 19, 2023 |
A fringe religious group is teaching about environmental harmony in a world that is progressively becoming more tightly controlled, more wasteful, and more out of sync with the environment around it. Looking ahead to the end of the world, their prophet, Adam One, warns that the apocalypse is coming and attempts to prepare his flock of misfits and scientists by teaching how to live at one with the world they once used thoughtlessly.

Margaret Atwood’s books are startling cautionary tales, situations currently happening in the world taken to extremes. In A Handmaid’s Tale, it was warning of taking religion too far; in this book, it’s wastefulness. This book is a spinoff of Oryx and Crake, a novel that takes place in parallel to the world of The Year of the Flood, and a few of the main characters of Oryx and Crake have brief cameos, though the storyline is not similar.

I do, however, have some complaints. I must temper them with the warning that I have been a consummate fan of both Atwood’s and of the genre of speculative fiction as a whole, and that I do appreciate this book.
-First, this book was sometimes hard to follow. The narrative would skip through time periods and characters in a manner that I occasionally found incredibly frustrating; I would end up losing track and skipping back to the beginning of the chapters just to find out who and when I was reading about.
-Second, the tempo of the narrative was amazingly slow – and then when the end of the world happened, it was skimmed over in a couple of pages just to find a ponderous aftermath that did not feel anywhere near as dire as the situation demanded it to be.
-Third, I never really clicked with the characters. I think the only one who really grabbed hold of me was Toby, but I couldn’t make myself care about the fates of anyone else. This is not to say that they are not fleshed out fully – if anything, the opposite is true. Atwood truly did her best to make her these environmental hippies cum end of the world religious activists seem particularly human, and this is one of her strengths. They just didn’t matter much to me.
-Fourth, there were a couple of plot holes that absolutely drove me insane. I got to them, and I’d end up stopping to dwell on them to try and figure out explanations. I really felt like I’d been jerked out of the story to try and figure out her literary devices.

Noting those things, I would also like to say that while I enjoyed this book, it wasn’t for the reasons most people would.

I always find Atwood’s writing to be something like a meditation. It’s got a comfortable, calm rhythm to it, and forces itself to work at its own pace through your head, which can sometimes be somewhat disconcerting. The diction is amazingly believable; it’s amazing how lifelike the mental conversation can be. Her writing is what I resort to if I’m anxious – even if she is writing about disturbing situations, it is always in a methodical, lyrical manner that forces you to be calm when you think about it. Maybe I’m silly to think of it in that manner, but I will always appreciate that characteristic of her writing, that earthy, deliberate contemplation of existence.

Atwood’s writing also pairs amazingly well with that of Sheri S. Tepper’s; Atwood is a master of the first person account of a disaster, Tepper that of the third person. Often, what they write about is similar and with that sort of sideways take on what is current in the world, though Tepper’s are usually placed in a much more unfamiliar setting.

Would I recommend this book? Certainly, to those who truly enjoy the genre of speculative fiction. Will I be rereading it endlessly like I did A Handmaid’s Tale? Probably not; while I enjoyed it, it’s not compelling enough to want to revisit. ( )
  lyrrael | Aug 3, 2023 |
I loved the themes of conservation and vegetarianism in this novel, but the story itself just didn't cut it. A world wide epidemic strikes the earth wiping out virtually all of humanity, but somehow all the main characters in the novel, no matter where they are, seem to survive. I mean, c'mon... ( )
  kevinkevbo | Jul 14, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 346 (next | show all)
Om Margaret Atwoods ”Syndaflodens år” kommer att räknas till de stora framtidsskildringarna går inte att säga ännu, men potentialen finns.
 
In Hieronymus Bosch–like detail, Atwood renders this civilization and these two lives within it with tenderness and insight, a healthy dread, and a guarded humor.
 
"The Year of the Flood" is a slap-happy romp through the end times. Stuffed with cornball hymns, genetic mutations worthy of Thomas Pynchon (such as the rakuunk, a combined skunk and raccoon) and a pharmaceutical company run amok, it reads like dystopia verging on satire. She may be imagining a world in flames, but she's doing it with a dark cackle.
 
Personally, though, I prefer Atwood in a retro mood. I’d easily take “Alias Grace” or “The Blind Assassin” over the lucid nightmares of “The Handmaid’s Tale” or “Oryx and Crake.” But fans of those novels should grab a biohazard suit, crawl into a hermetically sealed fallout shelter, and dive right in.
 
Canada's greatest living novelist undoubtedly knows how to tell a gripping story, as fans of "The Blind Assassin" and "The Handmaid's Tale" already know. But here there's a serious message, too: Look at what we're doing right now to our world, to nature, to ourselves. If this goes on . . .
 

» Add other authors (34 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Margaret Atwoodprimary authorall editionscalculated
Bramhall, MarkNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Drews, KristiinaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dunne, BernadetteNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Katie MacNicholNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Mann, DavidCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sawdon, VictoriaIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Whiteside, GeorgePhotographersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
THE GARDEN

Who is it tends the Garden,
The Garden oh so green?

’Twas once the finest Garden
That ever has been seen.

And in it God’s dear Creatures
Did swim and fly and play;

But then came greedy Spoilers,
And killed them all away.

And all the Trees that flourished
And gave us wholesome fruit,

By waves of sand are buried,
Both leaf and branch and root.

And all the shining Water
Is turned to slime and mire,

And all the feathered Birds so bright
Have ceased their joyful choir.

Oh Garden, oh my Garden
I’ll mourn forevermore
Until the Gardeners arise,
And you to Life restore.

From The God’s Gardeners Oral Hymnbook
Dedication
For Graeme and Jess
First words
In the early morning Toby climbs up to the rooftop to watch the sunrise.
Quotations
Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.
“Who lives here?” she says out loud. Not me, she thinks. This thing I’m doing can hardly be called living. Instead I’m lying dormant, like a bacterium in a glacier. Getting time over with. That’s all.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (2)

Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. Science Fiction. HTML:NATIONAL BESTSELLER â?˘ From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testamentsâ??the second book of the internationally celebrated MaddAddam trilogy, set in the visionary world of Oryx and Crake, is at once a moving tale of lasting friendship and a landmark work of speculative fiction.

The long-feared waterless flood has occurred, altering Earth as we know it and obliterating most human life. Among the survivors are Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, who is barricaded inside a luxurious spa. Amid shadowy, corrupt ruling powers and new, gene-spliced life forms, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move, but they can't stay locked

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

LibraryThing Early Reviewers Alum

Margaret Atwood's book L'any del diluvi was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.92)
0.5 1
1 28
1.5 6
2 80
2.5 25
3 365
3.5 142
4 918
4.5 119
5 500

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 197,870,194 books! | Top bar: Always visible