The Year of the Flood

Hello, it’s Heather here. Lydia lent me this novel earlier, and after finishing it I just had to write about it! I had no idea that this was the second of the trilogy until after reading it, though from the comments I’ve read online this seems to be linked, but not necessarily attached, to its predecessor. There are sexual and violent themes in this book so it’s probably best for under-eighteens not to read it.

Information

Author: Margaret Atwood

Published: September 2009

Publisher: Bloomsbury (UK), McClelland & Stewart (Canada)

Length: 448 pages

Genre: Speculative/Dystopian/Feminist Fiction

Brief description (from Goodreads)

"The Year of the Flood" is a dystopic masterpiece and a testament to Margaret Atwood's visionary power.

The times 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 friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers . . .

Meanwhile, gene-spliced 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. 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

(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6080337-the-year-of-the-flood)

Review

Boldly inventive as always, Atwood definitely succeeded in crafting an eerie story following two women that join a religious group called the Gardeners and following their lives before and after, and how they manage to survive the man-made, water-less 'flood'.

The narrative is a little messy at times, sometimes I had to flick back to check what time the chapter was set in and whether it was Ren or Toby. I think it might have worked better starting from the beginning, instead of year twenty-five. Every now and then, there’s a speech given by Adam One on a special event or day. At the start of the book, these really confused me, I had no idea what they meant in the context of the book, nor did I know who most of the referenced characters were. Had I read this novel for analytical or educational purpose, as oppose to leisure, I would probably have actually read these bits, but instead I found myself skipping past it to get to the narrative. These were bits were followed by hymns – which would have been a lovely touch – but again, I wanted to stay attached to the story, and it’s much better to hear or sing a hymn than to read it, so they were normally skipped too! In true Atwood style, when it ends you expect there to be another page or chapter; maybe the last novel in the series covers all the unanswered questions.

Like in The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood includes charming little touches to her writing, for instance Toby contemplating the word daybreak and whether the sun or the night are splitting. Her writing remains as bold as ever, venturing into some dark and sensitive themes and using a lot of symbolism. I’d rather not get too bogged down on the whole meat debate as it’s pretty controversial for everyone, but I did find it interesting to look at, despite Ren and Toby’s view being overly one-sided in terms of religion (consider that Jesus frequently ate meat). I was reading up on Atwood earlier and it’s mentioned that she links meat-eating to sexual oppression sometimes, so perhaps this was done on purpose to show how, as women, they were oppressed. Utilising this idea, it’s no wonder that the SecretBurgers (a blend of whatever meat, and sometimes fingernails, could be found) made several appearances; maybe a symbol for the disturbing presentation of sex.

The world itself felt tiny, main characters running into one another so frequently that I wondered if Atwood was doing this to infer fate or just a lot of coincidences in a small place. As characters go, I’ll admit that sometimes Nuala and Pilar somehow got muddled up in my head, the Gardeners being similar in dialogue, but this kind of made me think that the bee hive was a symbol for them – moving as one with the same flow of thoughts. Little Ren was very sweet and easily influenced by Amanda; I really liked how Atwood wrote Ren’s guilt and sense of betrayal as she grew up, sometimes finding their lifestyle difficult and yearning to dress like the other children did. Zeb was a powerful character, filling a role as a fatherly figure to Ren, which the novel was otherwise pretty absent from, aside from perhaps Toby being maternal towards her. I liked how the novel portrayed friendship as more powerful than romantic love.

This brings me onto the next subject: sexual and romantic love. Throughout the novel, Toby is described by Ren as the dry witch, completely un-sexual and hardcore. I really think this demonstrated the way that Blanco’s abuse of her destroyed her sense of sexuality, contaminating the very idea of romance. Ren herself has some bad experiences with love as well, and it’s written wonderfully, really illustrating the many ways love can hurt you. All in all, romantic love is presented as painful and damaging.

Perhaps this is what makes the narrators both feel so isolated. Ren is quiet, but in her head, it’s obvious that she’s having to deal with a lot of issues alone and unsupported in a truly selfless manner. Toby also comes across as isolated, feeling abandoned regularly by those she loved and having to hide her own doubts to fit in. It was fascinating to see how Toby settles into the Gardeners, particularly as she frequently expresses a difficulty to believe like they do, and yet she finds herself at home there. The theme of disguise and concealment was another element that Atwood presents as important. Toby is constantly trying to blend into the background, be it by joining the Gardeners to escape from Blanco, and by physically changing her appearance. This idea almost makes unique identity and individuality appear negative, making even the self lonely.

Personally, I found the novel difficult to initially get into and the structure a little awkward, but it’s definitely worth persisting with. The storyline itself develops nicely, making it enticing and scary to read. 

The Handmaid’s Tale

Hello, this is Heather! Lydia just uploaded some fantastic poetry, so if you haven’t already, please do go and read it; her and Shani write beautifully. On the topic of Lydia, she lent me this book a few weeks ago; I haven’t been able to review it for a while since I’ve been ill and pent up with writing UCAs stuff, but here’s a very short review on it.

Author: Margaret Atwood

Published: 1985

Publisher: McClelland and Stewart

My rating: ★★★★

This dystopian novel certainly has some moments that make the reader withdraw in revulsion. It takes place after the society has changed, meaning women have no rights to own property or be independent. The narrator, known by the name of Offred, has lost her money, her job, her husband and her daughter because of this revolution. For those of you innocent to the meaning of a handmaid, it is someone hired to have a baby with the man of the family when the wife is deemed infertile. The theme of feminism is adamant throughout as women are exploited and abused by men in this society. Even the upper class, married women feel little love and seem to have no control over their marriage.

I am glad to report there is not much explicit sex written about (it would have made my train journey to Leeds on which I read the book a tad awkward). The whole procedure of making love is treated in the antithesis of a romantic or spontaneous thing; the wife being present the whole time and the protagonist not going into specific details on what is going on. I think this really shows how traumatic but also automated it became for the protagonist. It is merely a routine, a job to her, yet she twists what is happening in her language, making it seem like a dentist appointment. There is a definite theme of distance, the book being void of proximity or love. Offred never names her child, perhaps to create a sense of detachment between them, nor does she ever disclose her genuine name, so she seems to not even know herself.

The reader sympathises with how lonely the narrator is but also the confusion. There is scarcely any detail on exactly what happened to cause the revolution, which is quite scary; imagine going to work one day and finding that you’ve been fired… and you have no money… and your husband owns all you have. It’s a terrifying thought that so little control can be grasped in these situations. I was a little confused at how the protagonist could remember some aspects of the past but not others. She spends so much time on a daily basis reflecting on the past that one would have thought she’d have at least painted a version of most vital life events in her head – yet she seems to remember random little things and forget some quite big other bits of the past. Aside from that, I really liked the writing style. 

“I sit in the chair and think about the word chair. It can also mean the leader of a meeting. It can also mean a mode of execution. It is the first syllable in charity. It is the French word for flesh. None of these facts has any connection with the others.”

Comments like the above I felt should have been more frequent in the tale. Firstly, it’s something that we all think about sometimes, the quirky ways of our language and the way the strict definitions of words, much like Offred’s identity, get muddled amongst the ever-changing nature of society. She is focusing on something familiar, the patter of language, looking at words like they hold a secret meaning that could free her from a society where she is banned from reading. 

Lydia and I both tirade the ending of the novel, which is, kindly worded, ambiguous. I was disappointed to learn there are no sequels and even Wikipedia could not enlighten me of what happened in the ending – it seems Atwood decided to leave the reader completely alone in deciphering what happened. I suppose it’s like a cycle; Offred is puzzled when the society is changed and confused on what is going on, much like the reader when they reach the end.

I really enjoyed Atwood’s writing style, blending Offred’s past in beautifully with the present in a surprisingly not confusing way. Her plot is something scary but different, it’s just a shame the ending is not expanded on further.