In 1972, Margaret Atwood published Survival: A Thematic Guide to
Canadian Literature, in which she proposed that Canadian literature
to that point had been based on the need to survive, whether
against nature or against human opposition. Thirty-seven years
later, Atwood has defended her thesis by making literal survival
the entire goal of the characters in The Year of the Flood. We
follow two main characters, Toby and Ren, who have managed to
survive, by their isolation, the waterless flood, a plague
affecting most human beings. However, to continue to survive, they
need to get out of their safe houses and out into the dangerous,
and possibly infected, world.
Both Toby and Ren are equipped with superior survival skills
because they had been members of God's Gardeners, a religion
devoted to lessening the effect that human beings have had on the
Earth and their fellow creatures. We learn of the Gardeners'
lessons through flashbacks of the time that both women spent with
the group, from the sermons of Adam One, the leader of God's
Gardeners, and from their hymns, the latter two interspersed
between the chapters of the novel. Neither Toby nor Ren had entered
the religion by her own choice. Toby was rescued by a group of
God's Gardeners as she was trying to flee from a psychopathically
violent employer, who was keeping her as a sex slave. Ren arrived
in the group as a child when her mother became involved with one of
the charismatic members of the group. And neither woman left the
group of her own accord, but each learned enough from God's
Gardeners to be able to endure her time in isolation and her
struggle to last in the "Exfernal World".
There is much to admire in any Atwood novel, but The Year of the
Flood demonstrates her exceptional ability to imagine, not only the
dystopian world of the future, which she has done before, but also
the language, the hymns and the religion of this future world,
along with all the negative detritus of that era, which we can see
evidence of in the world around us. Most chapters note the passing
of time by the saints days of the Gardeners. A few are actual
saints that we may know of, but Atwood's inventions show her
cleverness. The saints of the Gardeners are people who have noted
the problems in our environment and urged action to improve the
situation, like Saint Rachel Carson or Saint Dian Fossey the
Martyr. My favourite is Saint Farley of the Wolves. She also
demonstrates her inventiveness with the names of the hybrid animals
of the future, such as the Mo'hairs, sheep who possess long glossy
hair in a rainbow of colours, which are used for hair transplants.
Unfortunately, those who do receive these transplants continue to
smell of mutton in exchange for their luxurious locks. Also the
hymns of God's Gardeners feel true the nature of the group and take
the form of typical church hymns. Apparently Atwood has assembled a
group to perform them at her readings, as well as launching a
website offering t-shirts and other items connected with the novel
for sale.
In A Handmaid's Tale, Atwood's best known dystopian novel, the
leaders of the religion she created were the most powerful people
in that society. They made the rules for others and broke those
rules. They were the source of the problems. In The Year of the
Flood, God's Gardeners are a marginal group. At first, I thought
that Atwood was mocking the Gardeners with her characteristic
cynicism, but they turn out to be prophetic and skilful in the
world that they must survive.
Also at first I felt distanced from Toby and Ren and from their
stories. I thought of how Atwood when interviewed always seems to
maintain an ironic tone as if guarding her true self, and I felt
that this type of protectiveness was keeping me from complete
involvement with the main characters, such as I had felt in her
previous novels. However, by the end, I was lost in the story of
these characters and was left wanting more answers to the questions
it raised. The Year of the Flood is a sequel to Oryx and Crake,
another novel I enjoyed, and Atwood has promised a third volume to
this trilogy, which may answer some of my questions. The characters
of Oryx and Crake live in the same world as those of The Year of
the Flood, and the time periods of the two novels are parallel.
Eventually some of these characters spill into the newer novel.
However, The Year of the Flood has gone much further in its
examination of this world and is a superior work of the
imagination. Six years passed between the publication of these two
novels. I hope that we do not have to wait as long for the next
volume of this impressive trilogy.