The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwoods’ latest novel takes us into a dark and dangerous future scape. A man made plague ‘The Waterless Flood’ has brought on the apocalypse and few have survived. Those that have have become our narrators, Ren and Toby, two young women. As the novel progresses, we flash back to see the state of the world before the flood, and track their lives. Both women are searching for other survivors and they must navigate new and dangerous terrain in hopes of finding them.

Ren and Toby have both been members of the same religious cult called the ‘Gardeners’, and they display many similarities, however each woman is unique. Ren works as an exotic dancer, prostituting herself to earn her keep, yet she maintains a childish innocence, whilst Toby, who had previously suffered sexual abuse, is almost asexual and is wise beyond her years. Their alternative world-views give us the inside scope on what the world has become.

Themes of religion, morality, and apocalypse are key, with the Gardeners calling all men Adam and all women Eve. These are explicit motifs which show the polarity between believers and non-believers. Nature and the environment are very important, especially in terms of its decline. Pollution and genetical modifications are largely to blame for many of the issues as well as the ‘Corps’ conglomerate who exert their control over almost everything.

Stylistically, the novel is told between a combination of first person narration (either Ren or Toby) or a third person narrator for some of the intermediary parts on the Gardeners. This means that we are being presented with views on the subject, not an objective stance, which actually makes the reader take a view themselves. I found that as the two women were used to the state of their environment and were almost blase about it, I was riled by what had become of the earth. Cleverly Atwood has created an eerily possible outcome of our earth. Toby’s narrative is concise and sharp, and Ren’s is detailed and descriptive, so between the two of them we are able to paint a clear and accurate picture of their world, and the story moves at a fast pace.