The times and and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God’s Gardeners – a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life – has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God’s Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible.
Have others survived? Ren’s bioartist freind Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighting stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prion? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling power. Meanwhile, gene-splicing life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo’hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move, but they can’t stay locked away.
By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive.
———-
If you liked The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake (which I have not read), you would love this. Atwood has outdone herself yet again bringing us this carefully worded Dystopian novel. This novel at times scared me, for it predicts a probable future of climate shifts and ecosystem breakdown. There is just some sheer genius in placing familiar human forms in an entirely new universe and yet at the same time not crossing into fantasy fiction, not by my definition, at least.
Human failure, human complacency, human corrupt – all these are made salient in this book, which makes it all the more precious. Everyone with their little (or not) personal agendas, yet at moments of dire situations that smidgeon of human conscious and connection shine through. This is a story of survivors and their sacrifices and ordeal. There’s that intricate melding of advance technology and paleo survival skills that forces us to question ourselves what we would do in that situation? When energy runs out and nothing more is left but our delicate environment hanging on tenterhooks – how do we survive?
Some of the characters and the cult of God’s Gardeners are apparently taken from her previous book, Oryx and Crake. I haven’t read that one, but I’m thinking I like it already.
This book is a page-turner and in the words of che-che reviewers, it’s unputdownable.
The Year After the Flood
Have others survived? Ren’s bioartist freind Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighting stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prion? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling power. Meanwhile, gene-splicing life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo’hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move, but they can’t stay locked away.
By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive.
———-
If you liked The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake (which I have not read), you would love this. Atwood has outdone herself yet again bringing us this carefully worded Dystopian novel. This novel at times scared me, for it predicts a probable future of climate shifts and ecosystem breakdown. There is just some sheer genius in placing familiar human forms in an entirely new universe and yet at the same time not crossing into fantasy fiction, not by my definition, at least.
Human failure, human complacency, human corrupt – all these are made salient in this book, which makes it all the more precious. Everyone with their little (or not) personal agendas, yet at moments of dire situations that smidgeon of human conscious and connection shine through. This is a story of survivors and their sacrifices and ordeal. There’s that intricate melding of advance technology and paleo survival skills that forces us to question ourselves what we would do in that situation? When energy runs out and nothing more is left but our delicate environment hanging on tenterhooks – how do we survive?
Some of the characters and the cult of God’s Gardeners are apparently taken from her previous book, Oryx and Crake. I haven’t read that one, but I’m thinking I like it already.
This book is a page-turner and in the words of che-che reviewers, it’s unputdownable.