The Year of the Flood (The Maddaddam Trilogy, #2)

by Margaret Atwood

From the Booker Prize–winning author of Oryx and Crake, the first book in the MaddAddam Trilogy, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Internationally acclaimed as ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by, amongst others, the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Village Voice

In a world driven by shadowy, corrupt corporations and the uncontrolled development of new, gene-spliced life forms, a man-made pandemic occurs, obliterating human life. Two people find they have unexpectedly survived: Ren, a young dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails (the cleanest dirty girls in town), and Toby, solitary and determined, who has barricaded herself inside a luxurious spa, watching and waiting. The women have to decide on their next move—they can’t stay hidden forever. But is anyone else out there?

• ISBN10: 030739798X
• ISBN13: 9780307397980
• Publish Date: 27 July 2010 (first published 1 January 2009)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: CA
• Imprint: Vintage Canada
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 448
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/isbn/9780307397980

Reviews

[clementine]

I thought this was a more compelling narrative than Oryx and Crake, which just felt a little unfinished to me. The characters were definitely more interesting, as was the focus on the environmentalist religion, which had a robust theology. The ultra-capitalist dystopian world on the brink of environmental disaster is pretty much believable. This did start lagging for me in the middle, and I'm just still not totally convinced. I don't know what it is, but there's something about this series that I'm not connecting with fully. Maybe it's just that I always think Atwood is at her best when she's meticulously deconstructing women's relationships with the world as we know it, which makes something like this seem like a waste of her talents, no matter how competently-done.

[brokentune]

2.5*

This is a combined review of the trilogy. Well, not so much a review as just a few thoughts.

"But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you've had a little, you start shaking if you don't get more."

When Oryx & Crake was first published, I could not put it down. It was my first Atwood, none of my friends knew about her (I was still at uni at the time) and people thought I was on the crazy train when it didn't win the Booker.

Strangely, my impressions of Oryx & Crake kept me from reading the other two books in the trilogy as soon as they were published, and I only managed to remedy this over the past couple of months.
I kinda wish I hadn't. Not that Year of the Flood and MaddAddam were bad books - the writing was exquisite - but they did not hold the same punch as O&C which is basically "Snowman, the Jimmy"s story.
Being Snowman, the story is slightly mad and told by a madman. I never really knew whether to believe him or not, and that made reading quite fantastic.

Year of the Flood is basically the companion piece told from the view of Toby, a tough but sane, survivor of the Flood. While Toby's story and the of her fellow survivors is interesting, it merely adds to the existing world that Atwood created in O&C.

MaddAddam stretched this even further. Unfortunately, by this time, I had learned about all I wanted to know about the Flood and the aftermath and the Crakers.

By the end, I was only wondering why we needed book 3 at all? I wish she had rolled books 2 and 3

[mary]

I really enjoyed this second book in the MaddAddam trilogy. This trilogy basically centers around the theme of how the arsenal of death by stupidity is quite impressive for a species as smart as humans. I enjoyed how the ending of this book was the same as the ending to the first book "Oryx and Crake." Atwood has retold the tale in this book through other characters, mostly focusing on different details in the same world.

More specifically this book in the series centers around God's Gardeners, which is essentially a back-to-nature cult founded by Adam One. And they have predicted the Waterless Flood, which is the plaque that wipes out most of humanity.

One thing I adore about Atwood is how she is excellent at showing what happens when human beings cannot love. She does so in a non-judging way. For example the main character Crake uses utopian desire for perfectability which replaces the lost and lonely self.

Overall Atwood is a funny and clever writer and I think this is a great second book in a series. The little flaws in “The Year of the Flood” are I believe part of the pleasure. Just as the flaws in human beings are what make us beautiful. Atwood sure knows how to show us ourselves.

[angelarenea9]

This review is posted on my blog
I liked this book a lot more than the first one, and to be honest I liked the first one a lot more once I had the perspective of this book. I was pretty generous with my 3 star rating of Oryx and Crake mostly because of how much it made me think, and continues to make me think, but this book really earned it's 4 stars, and I liked it in it's own right.

I really enjoyed the different points of view of Toby and Ren. It was a little bit confusing at first, trying to figure out the timeline and characters, but it really brought the world to life. I thought there was some interesting religious points brought up by the gardeners, but most importantly I think that this book really showed Jimmy/Snowman's character. All of the characters went through similar, traumatic events, and lived through what was essentially almost the end to the human race. In the first book we see Jimmy sinking into himself, and wholeheartedly believing his is the last human on earth. He thinks that there is no way that anyone else could have survived. On the other hand Ren has no reason whatsoever to believe that anyone else has survived let alone Amanda, the one person she reached out to. But she believes that it is possible. Then Toby who is somewhere between the two, she feels like the last person, but she wants to believe that Zeb survived. She *wants* to believe, but she isn't always able. I really enjoyed seeing Jimmy/Snowman from Ren's perspective, as well as seeing his story as seen by others. It shows that he really is just a misogynistic, narcissistic, low life, that has an inflated scene of his own importance and worth. It was this, I think, that made both books better. The perspective change. I know that I questioned in a review or Oryx and Crake if something was how Jimmy saw things, or how the author saw them, and I am very pleased that this book answers that question.

If you have read Oryx and Crake you must go and get this book right now because you are missing out if you don't!

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

The Year of the Flood follows the lives of two characters, Toby and Ren. Toby is a young woman who lost her family and the corporations are to blame. She is forced work in a burger chain you would never want to eat at, that was until she met the Gardeners. Ren grows up working in a sex club called Scales and Tails. She previously dated Jimmy (Snowman) and found herself locked in bio-containment when the pandemic happened.

This is the second book in the Maddaddam trilogy and happens simultaneously to Oryx and Crake (for the most part). While book one jumped between the dystopian corporations-controlled world and after the pandemic, The Year of the Flood is more linear and set mainly in the pre-apocalyptic world. While it isn’t really necessary to read Oryx and Crake first, I think the majority of the world building was done in the first book leaving this one more open to focus on the characters and plot.

I will admit I loved the way Oryx and Crake portrayed the corporations dystopian world I love so much but I think The Year of the Flood was overall a better novel. I liked the characters more and the portrayal of a religious cult was fascinating. Margret Atwood seems to draw a lot on personal religious experiences and then build on that to create this cult. I’ve been in plenty of churches, have met many religious fanatics and it really feels like Atwood has too.

She even took the religious element one step further by adding 14 hymns; even during her book promotions and on the audio book they have performances of these hymns. I think Atwood managed to balance religious fanaticism and hostile corporation practises just right in the novel. Both never felt overpowering and allowed for character and plot development to take the foreground.

The more I read of Atwood the more I am in awe of her brilliance. I remember reading The Handmaids Tale and never really thought too much of it but now I that I know her style and the messages she wants to get across, I feel like I should try that book again. There are some other Atwood books I want to try as well so they might have to come first.

I’m entrenched in the Maddaddam world and looking forward to reading the final novel in the trilogy. Luckily I have the book on my shelf waiting and I probably read it soon. I don’t normally read a series (or the same author) so close together but I was sucked in and needed more from this world. Fans of both post apocalyptic and dystopian novels should check out the Maddaddam trilogy, there are some interesting themes through the first two books and I’m sure it will continue in book three.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/10/24/book-review-the-year-of-the-flood/