The Year of the Flood

by Margaret Atwood

This is the sequel to Oryx and Crake.  This story in part takes up where the first one left off, but also includes some history parallel with the first book.  I found this book read more easily than the first one but I found the numerous characters and the fact that they bounce around between being renegades and "compound inhabitants" very hard to follow at times.

As the book starts the "Waterless Flood" (the plague that has decimated humanity) has occurred and it appears that only two women have survived.  One, an employee of a Spa and another a dancer/prostitute in a club who had been in regularly sactioned quarantine to make sure she was not diseased.  I can't remember how it was that the Spa woman survived and her colleagues/clients didn't.

Both women are running low on supplies and fear they may starve.  The second woman is able to reach a friend of hers who was out in the desert working on an art installation and her friend comes and rescues her... now there are three.

As the book proceeds we jump back in time to pre-plague earth and meet a group of people called God's Gardeners.  This group is trying to live a vegan, low consumption life style and warning of the dangers of eating meat, consumption etc.  Each day of the year they pray to a saint or saints for support and guidance. The presence of religion/deity is even more prevalent in this book than in the first one. The Gardeners have their feast days, rituals, songs, "sayings".  Can you be environmentally conscious without turning it into a religion?  Of course, they are threatening to the establishment and are attacked at times.

Toby, the Spa Lady and Ren the dancer were former members of God's Gardeners but left for separate reasons.  Ren and Amanda meet some boys they knew from the Gardeners.  These boys are "kidnapped" by some bad guys "painballers" who also survived.  Ren and Amanda go seeking more food and also to track the boys with dire condquences for Amanda, she becomes the painballers prisoner.

Ren eventually meets up with Toby and they reunite with some of the Gardeners.  Ren and Toby set off to rescue Amanada and arrive on the scene of the painballers and Amanda at the same time as Snowman.  Ren is happy to see Snowman because she has been in love with him and had had a relationship with him in the past.

As this book ends we realize that the future implied in the first book may not be as bleak as we feared.

The third book is coming out next month.  I will be curious to see what direction Atwood takes civilization in.