Much of ‘The Year of the Flood’ focuses on what happened to Toby and Ren and how they came to join the God’s Gardeners before disease wipes out the majority of the population. However, more elements from the first book are gradually introduced and it is eventually revealed how Jimmy and Glenn became known as Snowman and Crake respectively.
More of a companion novel than a chronological sequel or prequel, ‘The Year of the Flood’ initially has very little character cross-over with ‘Oryx and Crake’. Atwood has previously said that any aspect of the setting depicted in the MaddAddam trilogy has the potential to turn into reality depending on how the technology that exists today is developed in the coming decades. Indeed, the reference to a Wall being built to keep the Tex-Mexican refugees out because a fence on its own wasn’t enough suggests that certain aspects of Atwood’s speculation may not be so far from coming true. Looking past all the strange names for characters, places and objects in this speculative universe reveals a lot of intriguing parallels with the world as it is today or could become in the future.
Only two women from the community, Toby and Ren, survive the catastrophe which was predicted years earlier by the Gardeners who coined it the Waterless Flood.ĭystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction isn’t usually my genre of choice but it feels more relevant than ever at the moment.
Set in the same universe as ‘Oryx and Crake’, ‘The Year of the Flood’ follows a lower class eco-religious cult known as the God’s Gardeners and their alternative perspective of the same apocalypse. I really enjoyed Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood a couple of years ago and have finally got round to reading the second book in her acclaimed MaddAddam trilogy ‘The Year of the Flood’.
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