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38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A trip back into Atwood's dystopian future, Sep 7 2009
In The Year of the Flood, Atwood explores further the dystopian future she created in her book Oryx & Crake. It's not really a sequel or a prequel, but more of a companion book. The events in this book happen before, during, and after the events in Oryx & Crake; there are many of the same characters and even a few overlapping scenes, which will be rewarding for those that have read Oryx & Crake, kind of like performing a secret handshake with Atwood. But you don't have to read Oryx & Crake to understand The Year of the Flood, as it works very well as a stand alone novel.
The book is set in the future, where the world has been over run with CorpSeCorps (Corporation Security Corps), genetic mutations, underground drug rings, animal extinctions, and more fun things. The main action in The Year of the Flood takes place surrounding a religious group called God's Gardeners that are basically like new age environmental hippies. The structure of the book is interesting, with lots of flashbacks (nicely dated with the year, thank you Atwood). It is also divided into three rotating sections: that of Adam One (head of the God's Gardeners), Ren, and Toby.
Atwood manages to create here a world that is frighteningly like our own world, but stretched to the max. She has some interesting things to say about religion in this book, about our treatment of the planet, about genetic experimentation. I would say it's an environmentalist book, but it's really not that simple. The greatest achievement in this book is that there are no easy answers. There is something unsettling about Adam One and the God's Gardeners, even with all their loving talk. There are questions about morality and questioning authority, about ritual for the sake of ritual and the power of cult and religion.
Her writing is quite beautiful at times, but never just for the sake of being 'literary'. It can be a harsh world, and Atwood doesn't back down when it's time to deliver the thrills, the gruesome details. This book is full of action, and fast-paced.
I hope that Atwood explores this world even further in a third book, as I believe there are more stories to tell here.
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I can't wait for the third book in this trilogy, Sep 24 2009
In 1972, Margaret Atwood published Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, in which she proposed that Canadian literature to that point had been based on the need to survive, whether against nature or against human opposition. Thirty-seven years later, Atwood has defended her thesis by making literal survival the entire goal of the characters in The Year of the Flood. We follow two main characters, Toby and Ren, who have managed to survive, by their isolation, the waterless flood, a plague affecting most human beings. However, to continue to survive, they need to get out of their safe houses and out into the dangerous, and possibly infected, world.
Both Toby and Ren are equipped with superior survival skills because they had been members of God's Gardeners, a religion devoted to lessening the effect that human beings have had on the Earth and their fellow creatures. We learn of the Gardeners' lessons through flashbacks of the time that both women spent with the group, from the sermons of Adam One, the leader of God's Gardeners, and from their hymns, the latter two interspersed between the chapters of the novel. Neither Toby nor Ren had entered the religion by her own choice. Toby was rescued by a group of God's Gardeners as she was trying to flee from a psychopathically violent employer, who was keeping her as a sex slave. Ren arrived in the group as a child when her mother became involved with one of the charismatic members of the group. And neither woman left the group of her own accord, but each learned enough from God's Gardeners to be able to endure her time in isolation and her struggle to last in the "Exfernal World".
There is much to admire in any Atwood novel, but The Year of the Flood demonstrates her exceptional ability to imagine, not only the dystopian world of the future, which she has done before, but also the language, the hymns and the religion of this future world, along with all the negative detritus of that era, which we can see evidence of in the world around us. Most chapters note the passing of time by the saints days of the Gardeners. A few are actual saints that we may know of, but Atwood's inventions show her cleverness. The saints of the Gardeners are people who have noted the problems in our environment and urged action to improve the situation, like Saint Rachel Carson or Saint Dian Fossey the Martyr. My favourite is Saint Farley of the Wolves. She also demonstrates her inventiveness with the names of the hybrid animals of the future, such as the Mo'hairs, sheep who possess long glossy hair in a rainbow of colours, which are used for hair transplants. Unfortunately, those who do receive these transplants continue to smell of mutton in exchange for their luxurious locks. Also the hymns of God's Gardeners feel true the nature of the group and take the form of typical church hymns. Apparently Atwood has assembled a group to perform them at her readings, as well as launching a website offering t-shirts and other items connected with the novel for sale.
In A Handmaid's Tale, Atwood's best known dystopian novel, the leaders of the religion she created were the most powerful people in that society. They made the rules for others and broke those rules. They were the source of the problems. In The Year of the Flood, God's Gardeners are a marginal group. At first, I thought that Atwood was mocking the Gardeners with her characteristic cynicism, but they turn out to be prophetic and skilful in the world that they must survive.
Also at first I felt distanced from Toby and Ren and from their stories. I thought of how Atwood when interviewed always seems to maintain an ironic tone as if guarding her true self, and I felt that this type of protectiveness was keeping me from complete involvement with the main characters, such as I had felt in her previous novels. However, by the end, I was lost in the story of these characters and was left wanting more answers to the questions it raised. The Year of the Flood is a sequel to Oryx and Crake, another novel I enjoyed, and Atwood has promised a third volume to this trilogy, which may answer some of my questions. The characters of Oryx and Crake live in the same world as those of The Year of the Flood, and the time periods of the two novels are parallel. Eventually some of these characters spill into the newer novel. However, The Year of the Flood has gone much further in its examination of this world and is a superior work of the imagination. Six years passed between the publication of these two novels. I hope that we do not have to wait as long for the next volume of this impressive trilogy.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Year of The Flood, a second Handmaid's Tale?, Nov 14 2009
I picked up this book knowing only these two things: That it was a dystopic science-fiction novel, and that it was written by Margaret Atwood, whose only other novel I've read was "The Handmaid's Tale". I found this novel to be very similar to "The Handmaid's Tale" in its depth of world creation. There is an alternate universe, which like the world created in many dystopic novels, is an exaggerated future, but one that is by no means difficult to see paralleled in our own society.
After reading this novel, a real page turner, my opinion of Atwood's writing abilities has only been further heightened. I was under the impression that "The Handmaid's Tale" was an unrepeatable masterpiece, but "The Year of the Flood" is extremely close in quality. Admittedly, I knew "Oryx and Crake: A Novel" was supposedly good, but I had skipped over it because of the weird title. However, after reading this novel, "Oryx and Crake" has moved up to the top of my reading list, and I cannot wait to read more about the world Atwood has so brilliantly created. I would recommend this book to everyone, especially those who are fans of literature or fans of science-fiction, because this book has the ability to please both types of discerning reader immensely. This book is a MUST READ!
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