Book Review: The Year of the Flood

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

I had a sense of nervous excitement before reading The Year of the Flood, the second book in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. I loved the first one in the series, Oryx and Crake, so much, I was worried that this one wouldn’t live up to my very high Atwood standards.

Happily, I can report that all of my worrying was in vain. There’s something about Atwood’s prose that I just can’t get enough of, and she didn’t disappoint in Year of the Flood. Her writing isn’t flowery, in fact, it’s very straightforward: she describes scenery, events, and conversations the way her characters would describe them in real life. Yet, in spite of this unembellished style, she paints such a vivid picture of the dystopian universe she’s created for her characters.

In Year of the Flood, we witness some of the same events we read about in Oryx and Crake, but from a different perspective. Jimmy, the protagonist of the first book, grew up in an upper class, wealthy community and worked white-collar jobs. In contrast, Ren and Toby, the main characters in Year of the Flood, live in the pleeblands, which are dangerous, fast-paced, crime-filled cities far removed from the well-manicured, corporation-controlled Compounds that are populated by the wealthy.

From the very beginning, it’s clear that both Toby and Ren have survived the same humanity-annihilating plague that Jimmy escaped in Oryx and Crake, although none of these characters are aware of this fact. Most of the book is spent flashing back to the two women’s pre-plague lives, when they were members of a quirky religious group called God’s Gardeners.

God’s Gardeners is a pacifist, vegetarian, Earth-loving religious sect. Toby joins God’s Gardeners to escape an abusive boss, but over time she rises through the ranks until she becomes a highly respected group leader. Ren, several years younger, is brought into the group when her mother follows her lover to the Gardeners, dragging her daughter away from her wealthy father and comfortable upbringing.

Toby and Ren’s reminiscences paint a picture of the corrupt world that led to humanity’s demise, just like Jimmy’s flashbacks do in Oryx and Crake. As the story progresses, the two women’s lives begin to overlap with characters from the first book in ways that were unexpected and quite craftily planned by Atwood.

The Year of the Flood is an essential follow up to Oryx and Crake. Atwood tells the same story so skillfully from entirely different perspectives, asking us, as readers, to reflect on critical themes like class, religion, and the role humans should play in engineering their world.

I have so much more to say but I’ll leave it at this for now. I wanted to write spoiler-free reviews of each book before digging any further. Stay tuned for my upcoming review of the final book in the series, MaddAddam, as well as deep dive posts into the trilogy’s themes!

You can buy The Year of the Flood here.

Rating: 4 stars

Rating Scale:
5 Stars: I love this book!!!!
4 Stars: Pretty good!
3 Stars: Good
2 Stars: Not for me
1 Star: Truly dislike