Book Of The Week: 12/24/12 - The Year Of The Flood by Margaret Atwood

The Year Of The Flood

By

Margaret Atwood

Although I consider Margaret Atwood's works dark  I am mesmerized by her novels.   A couple of years ago I listened to Oryx and Crake and while the story haunted me I knew I would return to another   novel by Margaret Atwood in the future.   Finishing up The Year Of The Flood last Thursday evening has made me an avid Margaret Atwood fan.  I liked it much better than Oryx and Crake.   Oryx and Crake is an excellent back ground novel for The Year Of The Flood which tells the story of what happens after Oryx and Crake ends although there is some over lapping of time between the two novels.   The  audio format of The Year Of The Flood is especially cool.  It has three voices and also music.  The book follows two women as their lives unfold up until a plague wipes  almost all of the population of the Earth and what follows  is the story of these two women's survival along with those close to them.   Both of the women spend time with an environmental fringe group called God's Gardeners prior to the plague and the life style of this group is featured as a contrast to the more  main stream life style of the people who live in the scientific communities and  the life styles of the poor people who live in the shells of what were once cities.   Margaret Atwood writes a tale of caution of what the future could hold and this novel cries out to us to change our ways.  Especially chilling is the saint days of the God's Gardeners Group which are named after the leaders of our current environmentalist movement's leaders.   The children of the God's Gardener group learned to recite  the names of the expired species of animals which was very sad.  And one of the expressions of this group that I found meaningful was to "put light around"  a person who needed support.   A college level class could be taken on this novel and I am sure one is offered in some universities as there are so many layers of meaning to the story.   Be sure to click on  the title and author's name above to follow the links to more information and enjoy the video below from the  play list  of God's Gardener's Hymns.