The Year of the Flood

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.

I do not often write reviews for the books that I've read, however, since I wrote such a rant for "Oryx and Crake", which was the first book about this world, I felt that I should comment on this one as well.

Since reading "Oryx and Crake," I've also read "The Handmaid's Tale," which I thought was -very- good, and which gave me far more faith in Margaret Atwood and the idea that she can write a bloody good book when she wants to. That, and my boyfriend's insistence that this book provides an ending to Jimmy/Snowman's story from "Oryx and Crake," is the reason that I finally got around to reading this book. And I have to say that I was not -completely- disappointed.

This book doesn't end, which is what I was promised before I read it, however it does provide some closure for "Oryx and Crake," albeit not all that much. However, "Year of the Flood" did provide a new perspective of the world Atwood created in "Oryx and Crake" through Toby and Ren. It was fun (fun seems too happy a word for this, but I can't think of a better one) to revisit the world that Atwood created with "Oryx and Crake," since it was so complex and fascinating. Also, "Year of the Flood" provides more of a look at God's Gardeners, who are really no more than mentioned in passing in "Oryx and Crake." "Year of the Flood" gave her previously created world more dimension and made it seem even more realistic and plausible. This plausibility makes it frightening and intense, and extremely interesting to read.

Overall, I have to say that I liked this book more than "Oryx and Crake," if only because maybe I'm beginning to get used to Atwood's writing style. However, to anyone who wants to read "Year of the Flood" I would definitely suggest that you finish "Oryx and Crake" first, because that order makes the most sense, I think.

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.[return][return]'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 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.[return][return]'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: [return]Saint E. O. Wilson of Hymenoptera[return]Saint Farley Mowat of Wolves[return]Saint Robert Burns of Mice[return][return]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.'