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A review by laerugo
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
4.0
i liked this one more than OAC in some ways, but less in others. it's difficult to describe.
i saw another reviewer call this one "the female perspective" while OAC was "the male perspective." that seems accurate. whereas jimmy was the everydayman, ren is more of the everydaywoman, and toby is... well toby is the person who we all WANT to be in a crisis, lmao. OAC is much more broader and narrowly focused; jimmy/snowman is so trapped in his own head, both before and after the plague, that he really only makes two serious connections in his life: oryx and crake, and they're both dead. without them, he is wasting away in solitude and illness. compared to Flood, we see how the women of the gardeners, ren and toby, are more - comparatively - stable because they have other people to rely on. where OAC was more concerned with philosophy and physiology and societal injustice told by an individual toughing it out against the world (out of isolation that he believed was necessity, though we realize now it wasn't), Flood has more internal and emotional struggles, sexual violence, juggling of practicality and sentiment, told by two women with different outlooks on the world. seeing how their stories finally meet up with jimmy's is really satisfying, but in a sad kind of way.
and it is sad to see jimmy from the outside, because i didn't realize how bad a shape he was in. like i knew he was hallucinating out of starvation and dehydration, but i didn't know he was near death due to his foot - despite myself, and despite how annoying and selfish he was and how unlikely it is, i want him to survive.
there are just a few things i was a little critical of:
- the law of coincidence. sometimes this is just called plot, so i try not to be too critical of it. but i find it very unlikely that after the plague, ren kept running into friends (or at least people they knew - eg the painballers); amanda, and then the gardener boys. what are the odds? no seriously, what are the odds? and then ren and toby running into croze AGAIN; it was a little unbelievable. but i can overlook it.
- there were times when the lives of ren and toby (mostly just ren) were so intertwined with crake/jimmy that it did become a little unbelievable. i pass this up to the dates of the books' publications (03 vs 09) and atwood figuring some of her audience might need a reminder that these characters matter and what they are up to at various times; like touchstones in the grander narrative. but how many times can you meet up with an old friend and realize they know/had a run-in with your ex? i thought at first this was just atwood's way of reminding us that jimmy is still out there as a major figure; but sometimes it just reads like... very obvious plot. i mean, jimmy didn't notice this same girl in his life as often as she noticed him, but then maybe that was the point, because ren WAS in love with jimmy, and he was so focused on oryx and crake (and himself) that he formed no emotional connections to anybody else; it's no wonder that in his state, he didn't recognize ren on the beach when she realized who she was immediately.
- i wasn't irritated by blanco, a sexual predator, being the main human antagonist; what occasionally was irritating was that he had cockroach-like invincibility powers, or plot-resistance powers, whichever. i almost wish they'd stop mentioning him so often so that when he did show up, or when toby saw him again when she wasn't expecting to, it'd be more of a shock/he would feel more of a threat.
nevertheless, i liked that there were plot twists i didn't imagine and the ones i did predict, usually didn't come true, or not in the way i thought they would. i thought that toby would get to know jimmy through anooyoo; wrong. i thought that toby would correspond with crake through extinctathon; wrong again. instead it ended up being ren who recognized both of them and put together the pieces of the plot threads from last book. sometimes it was actually a little disappointing when atwood laid out exactly what those plot threads were and how they connected; i almost wanted to leave it a secret, lol. but i'm sure there are tons more that i missed.
for the next book i'm particularly excited to read about the maddaddamites. i'm glad they survived (they are gonna be PISSED at jimmy though for locking them out of the compound? or at least i would) (and i wonder why crake told them not to consume the pill???? didn't he want to wipe out EVERYBODY except jimmy???) and i want to get to know them.
i am not so excited about the love triangles i see heading my way. toby/zeb, eh, okay i guess i can see it, even though if i were toby i would not be focusing on a romance right now. i see a croze/ren/jimmy(/oryx/amanda?) triangle coming up, which is disappointing because i think ren can do better lol (and ren/amanda should happen, but eh) but i still want her to be happy.
weirdly i think crake will feature in the next book, though i'm not sure how. it's almost like he was too larger than life to NOT matter in the end. even if he didn't make a copy of his brain in a computer somewhere, even if he's completely dead-as-a-doornail dead, i have a feeling he'll play a role. but i do like that Flood puts him and his actions into a broader context: you get to know the people that he tried to kill. these are the people whose lives he affected, who he experimented on and then attempted to murder. you realize how small he is - in jimmy's eyes he was, in some ways, godlike and unknowable, but in Flood you realize just how small and insignificant one man is, even if his actions had far-reaching consequences, his plans didn't plan for everything the human race is capable of. i'm fascinated by the maddaddamites and their story, what they thought of crake; it's clear now that they didn't believe in his projects at all, and that they were forced to work on them against their will. that puts more context into what kind of man crake was and hopefully means that they (were they gardeners? or just sympathetic to gardener goals?) are the kind of people that can help make a more sustainable earth.
anyway those are my thoughts. off to read book 3.
i saw another reviewer call this one "the female perspective" while OAC was "the male perspective." that seems accurate. whereas jimmy was the everydayman, ren is more of the everydaywoman, and toby is... well toby is the person who we all WANT to be in a crisis, lmao. OAC is much more broader and narrowly focused; jimmy/snowman is so trapped in his own head, both before and after the plague, that he really only makes two serious connections in his life: oryx and crake, and they're both dead. without them, he is wasting away in solitude and illness. compared to Flood, we see how the women of the gardeners, ren and toby, are more - comparatively - stable because they have other people to rely on. where OAC was more concerned with philosophy and physiology and societal injustice told by an individual toughing it out against the world (out of isolation that he believed was necessity, though we realize now it wasn't), Flood has more internal and emotional struggles, sexual violence, juggling of practicality and sentiment, told by two women with different outlooks on the world. seeing how their stories finally meet up with jimmy's is really satisfying, but in a sad kind of way.
and it is sad to see jimmy from the outside, because i didn't realize how bad a shape he was in. like i knew he was hallucinating out of starvation and dehydration, but i didn't know he was near death due to his foot - despite myself, and despite how annoying and selfish he was and how unlikely it is, i want him to survive.
there are just a few things i was a little critical of:
- the law of coincidence. sometimes this is just called plot, so i try not to be too critical of it. but i find it very unlikely that after the plague, ren kept running into friends (or at least people they knew - eg the painballers); amanda, and then the gardener boys. what are the odds? no seriously, what are the odds? and then ren and toby running into croze AGAIN; it was a little unbelievable. but i can overlook it.
- there were times when the lives of ren and toby (mostly just ren) were so intertwined with crake/jimmy that it did become a little unbelievable. i pass this up to the dates of the books' publications (03 vs 09) and atwood figuring some of her audience might need a reminder that these characters matter and what they are up to at various times; like touchstones in the grander narrative. but how many times can you meet up with an old friend and realize they know/had a run-in with your ex? i thought at first this was just atwood's way of reminding us that jimmy is still out there as a major figure; but sometimes it just reads like... very obvious plot. i mean, jimmy didn't notice this same girl in his life as often as she noticed him, but then maybe that was the point, because ren WAS in love with jimmy, and he was so focused on oryx and crake (and himself) that he formed no emotional connections to anybody else; it's no wonder that in his state, he didn't recognize ren on the beach when she realized who she was immediately.
- i wasn't irritated by blanco, a sexual predator, being the main human antagonist; what occasionally was irritating was that he had cockroach-like invincibility powers, or plot-resistance powers, whichever. i almost wish they'd stop mentioning him so often so that when he did show up, or when toby saw him again when she wasn't expecting to, it'd be more of a shock/he would feel more of a threat.
nevertheless, i liked that there were plot twists i didn't imagine and the ones i did predict, usually didn't come true, or not in the way i thought they would. i thought that toby would get to know jimmy through anooyoo; wrong. i thought that toby would correspond with crake through extinctathon; wrong again. instead it ended up being ren who recognized both of them and put together the pieces of the plot threads from last book. sometimes it was actually a little disappointing when atwood laid out exactly what those plot threads were and how they connected; i almost wanted to leave it a secret, lol. but i'm sure there are tons more that i missed.
for the next book i'm particularly excited to read about the maddaddamites. i'm glad they survived (they are gonna be PISSED at jimmy though for locking them out of the compound? or at least i would) (and i wonder why crake told them not to consume the pill???? didn't he want to wipe out EVERYBODY except jimmy???) and i want to get to know them.
i am not so excited about the love triangles i see heading my way. toby/zeb, eh, okay i guess i can see it, even though if i were toby i would not be focusing on a romance right now. i see a croze/ren/jimmy(/oryx/amanda?) triangle coming up, which is disappointing because i think ren can do better lol (and ren/amanda should happen, but eh) but i still want her to be happy.
weirdly i think crake will feature in the next book, though i'm not sure how. it's almost like he was too larger than life to NOT matter in the end. even if he didn't make a copy of his brain in a computer somewhere, even if he's completely dead-as-a-doornail dead, i have a feeling he'll play a role. but i do like that Flood puts him and his actions into a broader context: you get to know the people that he tried to kill. these are the people whose lives he affected, who he experimented on and then attempted to murder. you realize how small he is - in jimmy's eyes he was, in some ways, godlike and unknowable, but in Flood you realize just how small and insignificant one man is, even if his actions had far-reaching consequences, his plans didn't plan for everything the human race is capable of. i'm fascinated by the maddaddamites and their story, what they thought of crake; it's clear now that they didn't believe in his projects at all, and that they were forced to work on them against their will. that puts more context into what kind of man crake was and hopefully means that they (were they gardeners? or just sympathetic to gardener goals?) are the kind of people that can help make a more sustainable earth.
anyway those are my thoughts. off to read book 3.