For what did I know?

Margaret Atwood can do little wrong in my mind. I initially started reading this book because I’ve been kind of loving dystopian fiction lately, although it’s been a while since I read one. I thought that The Year of the Flood was a stand alone novel. About halfway through, I realised that it was a prequel to one of my favourite novels, Oryx and Crake. Such a good surprise. Ok, so back to the book.

The western world has been obsessed with the demise of humankind for a while now. There are many different speculative ideas about how our eventual decimation will occur. In The Year of the Flood, Atwood chooses plague.

The Year of the Flood follows two women who managed to survive the plague through very different means. Toby was in isolation after undergoing plastic surgery to disguise herself from a tormentor. Ren was also in isolation after the strip-club where she worked was attacked. The novel follows these women’s lives, and their intersections, both in the past and in the present. Eventually ending where Oryx and Crake ended, answering some long overdue questions.

Like all of Atwood’s books, or the one’s I have read at least, this novel gives you what you want. There are underlying themes throughout the book that really relate to our lives today. You can choose to consider these ideas and their implications, or you can just discard them. Either way, I think that everyone should read Atwood’s work.