As reviewed by Richard Bilkey in the October 2009 SF & Fantasy Buzz. Click here to see all Booktopia's Newsletters.
Oryx and Crake (shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003) was perhaps Atwood's most overtly science-fiction novel. A scathing satire on the perils of genetic engineering and unchecked corporate power, it predicted a dystopian future of ecological and societal collapse. The Year of the Flood revisits this bleak vision for our world and examines it from a slightly different angle.
Familiarisation with Oryx and Crake will certainly help you get your bearings more quickly and is certainly recommended but not required to fully appreciate this incredible novel. It is enough to know that it is set in the mid - late 21st Century in North America after a genetically engineered plague has wiped out most of humanity.
Oryx and Crake was primarily a satire, laying bare the political, moral and environmental consequences of current capitalistic and technological trends. It was the apocalyptic events themselves, and their disturbing plausibility, that Atwood was focussing on. The Year of the Flood zooms in to follow three female survivors of the 'Waterless Flood'; Ren, Toby and Amanda. The events themselves are less important in this novel than these three women and the way they respond to the devastation and lack of hope for their world.
In both the pornographic consumerism of the pre-plague society and its savage aftermath, strong relationships based on love and loyalty shine like beacons. For Ren, Toby and Amanda, it is all that is left and all the more beautiful because of it.
Book Description:
The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood — a visionary masterpiece.
Adam One, the kindly leader of the God’s Gardeners — a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, the preservation of all species, the tending of the Earth, and the cultivation of bees and organic crops on flat rooftops — has long predicted the Waterless Flood. ,P.
Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have avoided it: Ren, locked into the high-end sex club, Scales and Tails; and Toby, barricaded into the luxurious AnooYoo Spa, where many of the treatments are edible. The question is … have others survived?
Meanwhile, in the natural world, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating including the Mo’hair sheep with human hair and pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through a ruined world, singing their devotional hymns and faithful to their creed and to their Saints— Saint Francis Assisi, Saint Rachel Carson and Saint Al Gore among them — what odds for Ren and Toby, and for the human race?
By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful and hilarious, The Year of the Flood is a testament to Margaret Atwood’s visionary power.
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and Oryx and Crake.
