A review of The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Booker-winning Canadian author Margaret Atwood has always been surgical in her dissections of human character to reveal the darkness hidden within.
Through precise language, twisted dialogue and carefully constructed metaphors, she succeeds in getting us as readers cringing in recognition at a character's flawed thoughts, words or behaviour.
Her last couple of books have been descriptions of a post-apocalyptic world, first through male eyes (Oryx & Crake, 2003), and then through female eyes (The Year of the Flood, 2009).
While it has never been a safe time to exist as a female (we are much more likely to suffer sexual violence and discrimination - Personal Safety Survey, ABS e.g. twice as many women as men are sexually assaulted, and harassed; the majority of all violent acts are conducted by men), it is particularly brutal to be a woman when the human population is struggling for survival.
Atwood's narrators - Toby and Ren - are women who have been raped, kept as sexual slaves, pimped as high class prostitutes and who have used sexual favours to trade for food and physical safety.
The future ain't pretty! Atwood takes some of the trends of today's society and extrapolates their negative possibilities. Materialism and consumerism are rampant, exhausting the world's resources and creating a huge gulf between the haves and the have nots.
Nations have been supplanted by corporations. Unfortunately, organisations do not have a moral prerogative; shareholders want financial results, not necessarily happy citizens.
Biotechnology is examined, including some pretty scary outcomes. Pigs have been bred with human brain tissue to enable growth of replacement organs. This means there are some seriously intelligent pigs roaming around (with Atwood referencing Animal Farm by George Orwell).
The most bizarre creatures are the liobams: a cross between a lion and a lamb, which was requested by a Christian sect which hoped that if lions and lambs lay down together, the Day of the lord would be hastened! Liobams are very cute animals, but deadly!
Another theme is the impact of humanity's neglect of the environment. In the world of this novel, the human/urban landscape has taken over nature… but nature is fighting back.
In the midst of this world gone mad is an apocalyptic Christian cult called "God's Gardeners". They rescue kids in danger (including Toby and Ren), try and save endangered plant species, care for animals and insects, and warn about the prophesied "waterless flood" that will wipe out consumption-crazy and morally-numb humanity (notice clear allusions to Noah).
In a twist, there is actually a waterless flood (you have to read the book to find out what that is), but the distressing question is: who will survive?
Atwood very cleverly tells her story leaping backward and forward in time between the stories of Ren and Toby, revealing just glimmers of clues to the metanarrative.
Intermingled with these narratives are "sermons" by Adam One, the charismatic leader of the Gardeners sect. Each sermon is accompanied by a hymn, which Atwood acknowledges were inspired by the poetry of William Blake, as well as the Anglican Church of Canada Hymnbook.
There is some deep thinking in this book, as well as some wonderful quotes: "Time is not a thing that passes… it's a sea on which you float."
All the characters find themselves in a moral maze, struggling to work out a basis for making decisions. For example Toby is put in a position of assisting euthanasia. She starts with shock: "I'm killing her" to "I'm helping her die" and ends up with "I'm fulfilling her wishes".
The Bible is a reference book for the God's Gardeners, but they are loose with their interpretation. For example, Adam One claims that when Jesus called the disciples to be "fishers of men", he was telling them to stop eating fish and become vegetarians!
At one point a doctrine of sin is presented, as a significant character (don't want to spoil the plot at this point) works on "solutions to the biggest problem of all, which was human beings - their cruelty and suffering, their wars and poverty, their fear of death."
In the end it is clear that those who survive the longest have some form of belief system, and therefore hope.
This book is a clear warning about the dangers of secular humanism, materialism and consumption, and playing with nature.
