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The year of the flood

a novel

By Margaret Atwood

(53)

| Others | 9780385532082

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Book Description

When a natural disaster predicted by God's Gardeners leader Adam One obliterates most human life, two survivors trapped inside respective establishments that ...

Critics

Book Review: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood Share

With the state of the world these days I often fantasize about the end of it, and although my fantasy most likely won’t come true, Margaret Atwood has created a world that will appease one’s apocalyptic appetite. The different factions live in relati ... (read full critics)

blogcritics published on Fri, 17 Dec 2010

The Year of the Flood

“Beware of words. Be careful what you write. Leave no trails.” It is Year 25, the location is indeterminate and a virulent pandemic - the “flood” - has descended. While luminous green rabbits silflay, keeping an eye open for cuddly-but-deadly liobams ... (read full critics)

bookgroup published on Mon, 6 Dec 2010

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7 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

[Originally written for my book blog at www.michelleamanda.co.uk]
I really got into The Year of the Flood, it was a gripping story and I loved following the paths of the lives of Toby and Ren, and the other characters associated with them.
The writing is very good - and there's quite a few pearls o ... (continue)

[Originally written for my book blog at www.michelleamanda.co.uk]
I really got into The Year of the Flood, it was a gripping story and I loved following the paths of the lives of Toby and Ren, and the other characters associated with them.
The writing is very good - and there's quite a few pearls of wisdom that Margaret has written that I will be adding to my collections of quotes.
I didn’tknow there was a companion novel written by the same author which is called 'Oryx & Crake' and was published in 2003. I wish I had read that book first, as apparently, it explains more about the source of the plague in 'The Year of the Flood.' One other disappointment with this novel was the ending. I really loved the book, and I thought that the ending was really going somewhere and then it ends very vaguely.
Overall though, it was still a brilliant and imaginative story which leaves you thinking for many days to come. I am hoping to read the companion novel very soon!

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Michelle said on Jan 19, 2011 | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

I hadn't realized when I started this book that it was related to Oryx and Crake, which I own but haven't read yet, so now I'm wondering what I missed by reading first the book written second. (I'm told that The Year of the Flood stands on its own, but that the experience is enriched by knowledge of ... (continue)

I hadn't realized when I started this book that it was related to Oryx and Crake, which I own but haven't read yet, so now I'm wondering what I missed by reading first the book written second. (I'm told that The Year of the Flood stands on its own, but that the experience is enriched by knowledge of O&C.) In any case, a pretty good read.

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Hold Your Spin said on Oct 22, 2010 | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

engrossing and very credible, alarmingly so. it reads like, well, a prophecy of our foreseeble future - supposing we have one.

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Elsastella said on Apr 3, 2010 | Add your feedback

Classic Atwood

Very, very good - enjoyed it throughly. In true Atwood tradition you are made to think about how the world works and how it could work - how we could easily continue down a path that would lead to self destruction. At the same time her humour and wit shines through page after page.

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Liz4211 said on Sep 2, 2011 | Add your feedback

*** This comment contains spoilers! ***

Atwood's Trap?

To be honest, I feel disappointed at first when finishing this novel. It's a well-written novel, but there's something that cannot make me like it. The part that disturbs me a lot is the characterization of God's Gardeners: how come the author of Haidmaid's Tale suddenly switches her atitudes to ... (continue)

To be honest, I feel disappointed at first when finishing this novel. It's a well-written novel, but there's something that cannot make me like it. The part that disturbs me a lot is the characterization of God's Gardeners: how come the author of Haidmaid's Tale suddenly switches her atitudes toward fundamentalism and seems to fully embrace it anyway? Alright, perhaps it's because they are eco-fighters, but even some of them are willing to resort to violence to solve things (e.g. MaddAdam). What's more, they seem to me too morally upright and the sections about the Gardeners in the novel involve less satire than the part about the Compound. Then why does Atwood arrange things this way?
The following is my reading which tries to solve the part that I find problematic. It may not be Atwood's reading anyway since, as I find, she's quite serious about her Gardeners. At best, she might say, they are human and they are not perfect.
Perhaps the novel is indeed deceptively simple. The opposition between the Compound and the Gardeners is not that clear-cut as I have originally thought. Perhaps Flood is Atood's trap designed for unwary readers, and perhaps Atwood traps me, too.
What she plays with in this novel is the sense-making device in the apocalyptic paradigm. In traditional apocalypse, The Revelation for example, one of its function is to make sense of the chaotic world and know what is good and what is evil (Whore of Babylon, for instance). More importantly, to know that evil will eventually fall and the Good people will enter the new world.
Atwood in this novel then plays with this kind of (apocalyptic) binary opposition between good Gardeners and bad Compounds and this time she takes the viewpoints from the Gardeners. It would seem to me that the Gardeners are supposed to be the group that readers should feel identified with: that they save Toby and that they give Ren a happy childhood memory. But the ambiguity about this group builds on as the novel proceeds. How about when the MaddAdam group start to their terrorist attack? How about Crake's ambiguous role, does he belong to the Compound or to the Gardeners? Are they still "good" when they resort violence to attack the corupted late capitalist Compound and eventually annihilate all human beings?
What's more tricky is that the Compounds seem to deserve to be destroyed. We can only see things from the perspective of the Gardeners and the destruction of an old evil world seems necessary for the birth of a new world. No more persecutions for Gardeners, No more hiding around. Now they can really enjoy a cleansed world where they can really establish a good relationships between human beings and Nature.
But I think the trap is here: if we readers are not aware of what the Gardeners do or say and feel that they seem right, then we unconsciously become one of the fundamentalists. Atwood makes it seem right to think that it's ok to destroy the evil Compounds. She even does so by reducing the satire in the Gardeners so that readers may be more easily identified with them. But the ambiguity is still there--Crake and MaddAdam--they seem to occupy the twilight zone of the novel. Eventually, what seems clear between good and evil is not that clear-cut. We may feel that we are in the right side, but are we?
By arraging an opposition between good Gardeners and evil Compounds in appearance then, I think what Atwood wants to say is that the line between good and evil becomes far more ambiguous than ever. What one needs then is good judgment and critical mind in this chaotic and catastrophic world, even toward things which seem right at the first place such as environmentalism.

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yuuyh said on May 14, 2010 | Add your feedback

Green is the new black, they say, and this post-apocalyptic novel set in a time when humans have been largely wiped away as a result of the Waterless Flood clearly wants to act as a reminder of the importance of respecting nature, the world we live in, and life in general.
The message, like the plo ... (continue)

Green is the new black, they say, and this post-apocalyptic novel set in a time when humans have been largely wiped away as a result of the Waterless Flood clearly wants to act as a reminder of the importance of respecting nature, the world we live in, and life in general.
The message, like the plot, is simple and - may I say? - a little obvious, the characterisation verges on the stereotypical (with the remarkable exception of Toby, one of the main characters, whose complex and multi-faceted personality is beautifully conveyed), and the dynamics of romantic relationships between the characters a little bit simplistic.
Now, these are all admittedly features of sci-fi novels, but the impression I've had is that The Year of the Flood is trying to be both sci-fi and literary fiction, or something in between the two, and doesn't quite manage to get it right.
I have probably been too hard on this novel which is certainly thoroughly enjoyable and enriched by a solid vein of humour, and reinterprets green movements in what I feel is an insightful as well as ironic way - and not having read any other fiction by Margaret Atwood I should probably just shut up - but I feel that, erm, "there's potential there", and it's a shame that on this occasion the author hasn't been more ambitious.

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Blueskiesfrompain said on Nov 26, 2009 about the Hardcover edition | 1 feedback