The Year Of The FLood- Margaret Atwood

The Year Of The Flood
Margaret Atwood

Bizarre, nonsensical and totally bohemian. But it works! With The Year Of The Flood just like Oryx And Crake, Atwood has done away with conventional story telling and has decided to instead take the reader on a roller coaster ride into a futuristic world where the ruling power exert their supremacy with questionable ethics.

The book begins at the end, after the Waterless Floods have been unleashed and the human race has become extinct. Amongst those who have survived are Toby, an ex-counter sales clerk at SecretBurger and Ren a trapeze dancer at Scales and Tails. At one stage both Toby and Ren were members of The God's Gardeners, a religious group devoted to respecting the commands of the living world. Headed by Adam One, the God's Gardeners are tolerated by the CorpSeCorps (the ruling elite driven by increasing profit share at all cost) because they are not considered a threat. Adam One has long predicted the floods and under his saintly songs and holy teachings, the Gardeners are prepared for its tidal wave. Now barricaded in the Anoo Yoo Spa and locked in the solitary confinement room in Scales and Tails, Toby & Ren reminisce of their days with the Gardeners and contemplate how they are going to survive.

Oryx and Crake was the first Atwood book I had read and it completely blew me away. It still remains as one of my all time favourite books. When I heard there is a sequel, I could not wait to get my hands on it. Maybe I had too high an expectation of this book, and hence was a little disappointed when it did not hit the same high notes as Oryx and Crake. But that should not have really surprised me. Atwood does not seem the type of writer who would mearly imitate the same idea throughout several books. Atwood's imagination, her clever use of words, and the intelligent way she pens her stories continue to keep me in awe of her.

The Year Of The Flood is fun and at times disturbing. It is an eerie reminder of the delicate nature of our ecosystem and how close we are to destroying it.