Print List Price: | $18.00 |
Kindle Price: | $12.99 Save $5.01 (28%) |
Sold by: | Random House LLC Price set by seller. |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Audible sample
Follow the author
OK
The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam Trilogy, Book 2) Kindle Edition
The long-feared waterless flood has occurred, altering Earth as we know it and obliterating most human life. Among the survivors are Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, who is barricaded inside a luxurious spa. Amid shadowy, corrupt ruling powers and new, gene-spliced life forms, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move, but they can't stay locked away.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAnchor
- Publication dateSeptember 21, 2009
- File size1924 KB
Shop this series
See full series-
All 3$38.97
-
All 3$38.97
This option includes 3 books.
Customers who bought this item also bought
- Just remember, dear Friends: What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.Highlighted by 937 Kindle readers
- Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.Highlighted by 746 Kindle readers
- Why do we want other people to like us, even if we don’t really care about them all that much?Highlighted by 615 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood. The Year of the Flood is a dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her visionary power.
The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners--a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life--has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible.
Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers...
Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away...
By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive.
Margaret Atwood on The Year of the FloodI’ve never before gone back to a novel and written another novel related to it. Why this time? Partly because so many people asked me what happened right after the end of the 2003 novel, Oryx and Crake. I didn’t actually know, but the questions made me think about it. That was one reason. Another was that the core subject matter has continued to preoccupy me.
When Oryx and Crake came out, it seemed to many like science fiction--way out there, too weird to be possible--but in the three years that passed before I began writing The Year of the Flood, the perceived gap between that supposedly unreal future and the harsh one we might very well live through was narrowing fast. What is happening to our world? What can we do to reverse the damage? How long have we got? And, most importantly--what kind of "we"? In other words, what kind of people might undertake the challenge? Dedicated ones--they’d have to be. And unless you believe our planet is worth saving, why bother?
So the question of inspirational belief entered the picture, and once you have a set of beliefs--as distinct from a body of measurable knowledge--you have a religion. The God’s Gardeners appear briefly in Oryx and Crake, but in The Year of the Flood, they’re central. Like all religions, the Gardeners have their own leader, Adam One. They also have their own honoured saints and martyrs, their special days, their theology. They may look strange and obsessive and even foolish to non-members, but they’re serious about what they profess; as are their predecessors, who are with us today. I’ve found out a great deal about rooftop gardens and urban beekeeping while writing this book!
Another question frequently asked about Oryx and Crake concerned gender. Why was the story told by a man? How would it have been different if the narrator had been a woman? Such questions led me to Ren and Toby, and then to their respective lives, and also to their places of refuge. A high-end sex club and a luxury spa would in fact be quite good locations in which to wait out a pandemic plague: at least you’d have bar snacks, and a lot of clean towels.
In his book, The Art Instinct, Denis Dutton proposes that our interest in narrative is built in--selected during the very long period the human race spent in the Pleistocene--because any species with the ability to tell stories about both past and future would have an evolutionary edge. Will there be a crocodile in the river tomorrow, as there was last year? If so, better not go there. Speculative fictions about the future, like The Year of the Flood, are narratives of that kind. Where will the crocodiles be? How will we avoid them? What are our chances? --Margaret Atwood
(Photo © George Whiteside)
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
From Bookmarks Magazine
Review
“[The Year of the Flood] shows the Nobel Prize-worthy Atwood . . . at the pinnacle of her prodigious creative powers.” —Elle
“A heart-pounding thriller.” —The Washington Post Book World
“Leave it to Atwood to find humor in a post-apocalyptic world as she covertly, and brilliantly, addresses questions of how we need to live on an imperiled planet.” —Kansas City Star
“Atwood is funny and clever, such a good writer and real thinker. . . . The Year of the Flood isn’t prophecy, but it is eerily possible.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Timely and gripping. . . . Atwood tells a good story, one filled with suspense and even levity.” —USA Today
“Enthralling. . . . Memorable characters, a tightly controlled pace and shockingly plausible scenes make it fly—to a mysterious, skin-prickling ending.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Atwood renders this civilization and these two lives within it with tenderness and insight, a healthy dread, and a guarded humor.” —O, the Oprah Magazine
“Atwood spins the most arresting alternate mythologies to our hell-bent world. . . . The Year of the Flood is a slap-happy romp through the end times. Stuffed with cornball hymns, genetic mutations worth of Thomas Pynchon and a pharmaceutical company run amok, it reads like dystopia verging on satire. She may be imagining a world in flames, but she’s doing it with a dark cackle.” —The Los Angeles Times
“Thought-provoking, beautifully construct...
About the Author
From The Washington Post
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In the early morning Toby climbs up to the rooftop to watch the sunrise. She uses a mop handle for balance: the elevator stopped working some time ago and the back stairs are slick with damp, so if she slips and topples there won't be anyone to pick her up. As the first heat hits, mist rises from among the swathe of trees between her and the derelict city. The air smells faintly of burning, a smell of caramel and tar and rancid barbecues, and the ashy but greasy smell of a garbage-dump fire after it's been raining. The abandoned towers in the distance are like the coral of an ancient reef--bleached and colourless, devoid of life. There still is life, however. Birds chirp; sparrows, they must be. Their small voices are clear and sharp, nails on glass: there's no longer any sound of traffic to drown them out. Do they notice that quietness, the absence of motors? If so, are they happier? Toby has no idea. Unlike some of the other Gardeners--the more wild-eyed or possibly overdosed ones--she has never been under the illusion that she can converse with birds. The sun brightens in the east, reddening the blue-grey haze that marks the distant ocean. The vultures roosting on hydro poles fan out their wings to dry them, opening themselves like black umbrellas. One and then another lifts off on the thermals and spirals upwards. If they plummet suddenly, it means they've spotted carrion. Vultures are our friends, the Gardeners used to teach. They purify the earth. They are God's necessary dark Angels of bodily dissolution. Imagine how terrible it would be if there were no death!Do I still believe this? Toby wonders. Everything is different up close.
The rooftop has some planters, their ornamental running wild; it has a few fake-wood benches. It used to have a sun canopy for cocktail hour, but that's been blown away. Toby sits on one of the benches to survey the grounds. She lifts her binoculars, scanning from left to right. The driveway, with its lumirose borders, untidy now as as frayed hairbrushes, their purple glow fading in the strengthening light. The western entrance, done in pink adobe-style solarskin, the snarl of tangled cars outside the gate. The flowerbeds, choked with sow thistle and burdock, enormous aqua kudzu moths fluttering above them. The fountains, their scallop-shell basins filled with stagnant rainwater. The parking lot with a pink golf cart and two pink AnooYoo minibuses, each with its winking-eye logo. There's a fourth minibus further along the drive, crashed into a tree: there used to be an arm hanging out of the window, but it's gone now.The wide lawns have grown up, tall weeds. There are low irregular mounds beneath the milkweed and fleabane and sorrel, with here and there a swatch of fabric, a glint of bone. That's where the people fell, the ones who'd been running or staggering across the lawn. Toby had watched from the roof, crouched behind one of the planters, but she hadn't watched for long. Some of those people had called for help, as if they'd known she was there. But how could she have helped? The swimming pool has a mottled blanket of algae. Already there are frogs. The herons and the egrets and the peagrets hunt them, at the shallow end. For a while Toby tried to scoop out the small animals that had blundered in and drowned. The luminous green rabbits, the rats, the rakunks, with their striped tails and racoon bandit masks. But now she leaves them alone. Maybe they'll attract fish, somehow.Is she thinking of eating these future fish? Surely not. Surely not yet.She turns to the dark encircling wall of trees and vines and fronds and shrubby undergrowth, probing it with her binoculars. It's surely from there that any danger might come. But what kind of danger? She can't imagine.
In the night there are the usual noises: the faraway barking of dogs, the tittering of mice, the water-pipe notes of the crickets, the occasional grumph of a frog. The blood rushing in her ears: katoush, katoush, katoush. A heavy broom sweeping dry leaves. "Go to sleep," she says out loud. But she never sleeps well, not since she's been alone in this building. Sometimes she hears voices--human voices, calling to her in pain. Or the voices of women, the women who used to work here, the anxious women who used to come, for rest and rejuvenation. Splashing in the pool, strolling on the lawns. All the pink voices, soothed and soothing. Or the voices of the Gardeners, murmuring or singing; or the children laughing together, up on the Edencliff Garden. Adam One, and Nuala, and Burt. Old Pilar, surrounded by her bees. And Zeb. If any one of them is still alive, it must be Zeb. Surely is he on his way, any day now he'll come walking along the roadway or appear from among the trees. But he must be dead by now. It's better to think so. Not to waste hope.There must be someone else left, though; she can't be the only one on the planet. There must be others. But friends or foes? If she sees one, how to tell? She's prepared. The doors are locked, the windows barred. But even such barriers are no guarantee: every hollow space invites invasion. Even when she sleeps, she's listening, as animals do--for a break in the pattern, for an unknown sound, for a silence opening like a crack in rock. When the small creatures hush their singing, said Adam One, it's because they're afraid. You must listen for the sound of their fear.
2Ren. Year Twenty-five, the year of the Flood.
Beware of words. Be careful what you write. Leave no trails.This is what the Gardeners taught us, when I was a child among them. They taught us to depend on memory, because nothing written down could be relied on. The Spirit travels from mouth to mouth, not from thing to thing: books could be burnt, paper crumble away, computers could be destroyed. Only the Spirit lives forever, and the Spirit isn't a thing. As for writing, it was dangerous, said the Adams and the Eves, because your enemies could trace you through it, and hunt you down, and use your words to condemn you.But now that the Waterless Flood has swept over us, any writing I might do is safe enough, because those who might have used it against me are surely dead. So I can write down anything I want. What I write is my name, Ren, with an eyebrow pencil, on the wall beside the mirror. I've written it a lot of times. Renrenren, like a song. You can forget who you are if you're alone too much. Amanda told me that. I can't see out the window, it's glass brick. I can't get out the door, it's locked on the outside. I still have air though, and water, as long as the solar doesn't quit. I still have food. I'm lucky. I'm really very lucky. Count your luck, Amanda used to say. So I do. First, I was lucky to be working here at Scales when the Flood hit. Second, it was even luckier that I was shut up this way in the Sticky Zone, because it kept me safe. I got a rip in my Biofilm Bodyglove--a client got carried away and bit me, right through the green sequins and I was waiting for my test results. It wasn't a wet rip with secretions and membranes involved, it was a dry rip near the elbow, so I wasn't that worried. Still, they checked everything, here at Scales. They had a reputation to keep up: we were known as the cleanest dirty girls in town. Scales took care of you, they really did. If you were talent, that is. Good food, a doctor if you needed one, and the tips were great, because the men from the top Corps came here. It was well run, though it was in a seedy area--all the clubs were. That was a matter of image, Mordis would say: seedy was good for business, because unless there's an edge--something lurid or tawdry, a whiff of sleaze--what separated our brand from the run-of-the-mill product the guy could get at home, with the face cream and the white cotton panties? Mordis believed in plain speaking. He'd been in the business ever since he was a kid, and when they outlawed the pimps and the street trade--for public health and the safety of women, they said--and rolled everything into SeksMart under CorpSeCorps control, Mordis made the jump, because of his experience. "It's who you know," he used to say. "And what you know about them." Then he'd grin, and pat you on the bum--just a friendly pat though, he never took freebies from us. He had ethics.He was a wiry guy with a shaved head and black, shiny, alert eyes like the heads of ants, and he was easy as long as everything was cool. But he'd stand up for us if the clients got violent. "Nobody hurts my best girls," he'd say. It was a point of honour with him. Also he didn't like waste: we were a valuable asset, he'd say. The cream of the crop. After the SeksMart roll-in, anyone left outside the system was not only illegal but pathetic. A few wrecked, diseased old women wandering the alleyways, practically begging. No man with even a fraction of his brain left would go anywhere near them. "Hazardous waste," we Scales girls used to call them. We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.
That night when the Waterless Flood began, I was waiting for my test results: they kept you locked in the Sticky Zone for weeks, in case you had something contagious. The food came in through the safety-sealed hatchway, plus there was the mini-fridge with snacks, and the water was filtered, coming in and out both. You had everything you needed, but it got boring in there. You could exercise on the machines, and I did a lot of that, because a trapeze dancer needs to keep in practice. You could watch TV or old movies, play your music, talk on the phone. Or you could visit the other rooms in Scales on the intercom video. Sometimes when we doing plank work we'd wink at the cameras in mid-moan for the benefit of whoever was stuck in the Sticky Zone. We knew where the cameras were hidden, in the snakeskin or featherwork on the ceilings. It was one big family, at Scales, so even when you were in the Sticky Zone, Mordis liked you to feel you were still participating.Mordis made me feel so secure. I knew if I was in big trouble I could go to him. There were only a few p...
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B002PXFYKG
- Publisher : Anchor (September 21, 2009)
- Publication date : September 21, 2009
- Language : English
- File size : 1924 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 529 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #72,009 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #85 in Metaphysical Fiction
- #180 in Metaphysical & Visionary Fiction (Books)
- #781 in Dystopian Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid's Tale, went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump, when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against the disempowerment of women, and with the 2017 release of the award-winning Channel 4 TV series. ‘Her sequel, The Testaments, was published in 2019. It was an instant international bestseller and won the Booker Prize.’
Atwood has won numerous awards including the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
Photo credit: Liam Sharp
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book satisfying, interesting, and worth reading. They describe the pacing as thoughtful, complex, and resounding on many levels. Readers praise the writing quality as rich, detailed, and easy to imagine. They also find the characters richly developed, believable, and strong. Additionally, they appreciate the humor and satire. Additionally readers mention the book is intelligent and well-researched.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book satisfying, interesting, and addictive. They say it adds a great deal of atmosphere and information. Readers also mention the book is thought-provoking, exciting, and frightening.
"...Anyone who enjoys reading very rich, well-written thought-provoking literature will love The Year of the Flood...." Read more
"...-decimated world in a way that defies probability, but the storytelling is too enjoyable otherwise to make that a fatal flaw." Read more
"...To sum it up: This book is an exceptionally well written book with plenty of things to think about...." Read more
"...For me, "Oryx and Crake" was worth reading because it provided enriching backstory for "In the Year of the Flood", but otherwise I might have..." Read more
Customers find the pacing thoughtful, complex, and believable. They appreciate the world-building and overall story. Readers also mention the characters are vivid and jarring. They describe the book as chilling and a literary genius.
"...I found it engrossing, entertaining, thought-provoking and inspiring...all the things I most love in books...." Read more
"...as narrators of The Year of the Flood, and the two women are both richly-drawn and compelling in their own ways...." Read more
"...fond of Atwood's vocabulary, her neologisms and her extremely stylish way of putting things between the lines and using words that carry references..." Read more
"...from one narrator to another, and above all, her talent for imagining a completely different, yet convincing universe...." Read more
Customers find the writing quality of the book rich, detailed, and marvelous. They also say the imagery is vivid and easy to imagine. Readers mention the author weaves an interesting, intriguing, and surprising story.
"...Atwood’s prose remains top-notch, I find her writing spellbinding in a way I find difficult to put my finger on but I get lost in so easily...." Read more
"...What is remarkable is how very elegantly the writer lets the story unfold. Margaret Atwood does not underestimate her readers...." Read more
"...How sad! A real shame!Loved the sermons, loved the songs, loved the way God Gardeners treat nature and humankind...." Read more
"...It was well written and detailed. I wish I liked it better, but some books are not your cup of tea." Read more
Customers find the characters richly developed, believable, and well-drawn. They appreciate the author's delve into their histories. Readers also mention the female characters are strong and realistic. They describe the world as imaginative and colorful.
"...'s work: her ability to weave an addicting tale, her deft transition from one narrator to another, and above all, her talent for imagining a..." Read more
"...The cultural and social criticism was sharp, inventive. Jimmy's character was believable, it was easy to feel his loneliness, to bridge the person..." Read more
"The book takes you through an imaginative world with colorful characters and colorful dialogue...." Read more
"...I had difficulty connecting with the characters and the sermons/hymns. I usually love dystopian works, but this one fell flat...." Read more
Customers find the humor in the book tremendous, satirical, and light-hearted. They also describe the sermons and songs as funny at times. Readers also mention the book is provocative and combines gentle satire with biting social criticism.
"...That alone is well worth the read. Atwood weaves in a tremendous amount of humor and satire in these descriptions -- but she doesn't make the "..." Read more
"...It was deep and resounding on so many levels. The cultural and social criticism was sharp, inventive...." Read more
"...He's a wonderful pastiche, equally earnest and ridiculous--straight out of the pages of "Mother Earth News."..." Read more
"...Her rye sense of humor and unique world make this book a joy to read...." Read more
Customers find the book intelligent, unique, and savvy in its references and predictions. They say it has many gems of wisdom and an amazing extrapolation of science and social structures. Readers also mention the book mixes science and practical possibilities with sympathetic characters.
"...I found it engrossing, entertaining, thought-provoking and inspiring...all the things I most love in books...." Read more
"...I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of religion being used to convey the major themes and ideas of the book...." Read more
"...Crake was dark and masterfully developed, just out of reach of our sight and ultimately of Jimmy's insight as well...." Read more
"...Above average..." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the story quality. Some mention it's brilliantly realized, while others say the plot is too subservient to descriptions of various environments.
"...Disliked: ended with a cliffhanger for the next book; sometimes the religious content is a bit much" Read more
"...They teach horticulture and bee-keeping, survival skills, joyous life in the moment, sending "light" around those in need...all things that perhaps..." Read more
"......" Read more
"...time, nor as richly drawn as "The Blind Assassin", but it is a very strong entry in the genre of post-apocalyptic fiction...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the pace of the book. Some mention they love it, while others say it drags things along far too slowly.
"...It mostly stars a different cast of characters and gives quite a bit more time to what happened before society collapsed...." Read more
"...I found it slow, laborious, with moments of genius. But those moments did not warrant my time. I decided to give The Year of the Flood a try...." Read more
"...Went through both very quickly, and am now reading the third in the trilogy...." Read more
"...to reading this but I have to admit that I thought it dragged things along far too slowly...." Read more
Reviews with images
Damaged
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
The world in The Year of the Flood has undergone an apocalyptic change, the "waterless flood". Told from the viewpoint of a survivor who recounts her experiences from before the flood, the novel is a portrayal not so much of the characters, who indeed vividly jump from the page, but of the society over which this flood must wash.
With laser-like precision, the author's unique lens skillfully leads the reader through a dissection and analysis of our human collective. As painful as this sounds, when she portrays our materialism and animal consumerism in the extreme dimensions existing prior to the flood, how can we not see a clear comparison between fiction and our present day world? The CorpSeCorps is our government in bed with Helthwyzer, the pharmaceutical company. Happicuppa, the coffee company that laces us with "gen-mod" might very well be our Starbucks.
In this world, life is perhaps how one might imagine man were he reach his lowest state, completely fallen into ultimate corruption through the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Technology and science has advanced to such a degree that we have full reign over biological creation and animals deserve no reverence. Humanity has reached the goal of supremacy over nature.
I think it's safe to say that most humans wouldn't enjoy life in this Atwoodian world. Not only are animals subordinate, but most people are as well, unless of course you belong to the privileged class of scientists working for Helthwyzer or the government officials of the CorpSeCorps. Humans are at the mercy of each other's barbarianism. Your fellow man is most likely a rapist or thug and while atrocities may occasionally be apprehended, criminals are thrown into the "painball" wilderness where one is pitted against the other to the death for entertainment purposes, televised to the world.
In this fictional world, you can pretty much expect there is no sanctuary...with the one clear exception of "the Gardeners". Though she has no religious leanings, the main character, Toby, finds herself living amongst this group and the main narrative is her telling of how she came to join them, her state of existence surviving through the waterless flood and her relationship to other characters in the story. Because Toby is very much like you or me she is the central viewing window through which we see the story.
The Gardeners lend this Atwoodian society its only remaining thread of human dignity and cause for salvation. When orphaned Toby joins the Gardeners, it is because she has been rescued by them from an abusive employer, and though they come across as what we may view as a religious cult by our own standards, their principles, as illustrated throughout the novel in the form of well-written hymns and the teachings of their leaders known as Adams and Eves, fall nothing short of the highest ideals that could indeed save our world today.
In preparation for the "waterless flood", the Gardeners' objective is to learn self-sustainability and harmony with nature. They teach horticulture and bee-keeping, survival skills, joyous life in the moment, sending "light" around those in need...all things that perhaps resonate with any reader who has ever thought that perhaps our world could use a little more of this.
When the flood comes Toby has been separated from her gardeners clan. This is actually the starting point of the book with the timeline reaching back and then bringing the reader forward at about the midway point of the book. The waterless flood heralds the disbandment of the CorpSeCorps, Helthwyser and a total disintegration of any world order. Toby must survive alone and so the story of her life, post-flood, is intermixed with the telling of her story up to his point, the point from which she must learn to survive and we the reader discover the landscape of this world.
Anyone who enjoys reading very rich, well-written thought-provoking literature will love The Year of the Flood. Margaret Atwood takes the human element of literary fiction to the brink of futuristic, urban sci-fi and creates a world deeply shadowed by the most despicable qualities of humanity, but manages to provide a glimpse of our potential for grace.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Year of the Flood because I took away from it a reinforcement of that belief I carry in the fortitude of human grace. The Year of the Flood drew a crystal clear world for me, and a distinctive emotional and philosophical reaction from me, two feats that are not always so easy to find in real life. I found it engrossing, entertaining, thought-provoking and inspiring...all the things I most love in books. Therefore I give it the highest rating possible: 5 out of 5!
I purchased Margaret Atwood's The Year of The Flood on my Kindle and the above review, as with all of my reviews, is completely honest and impartial.
Top reviews from other countries
“All Creatures know that some must die
That all the rest may take and eat;
Sooner or later, all transform
Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat.
But Man alone seeks Vengefulness,
And writes his abstract Laws on stone;
For this false Justice he has made,
He tortures limb and crushes bone.
Is this the image of a god?
My tooth for yours, your eye for mine?
Oh, if Revenge did move the stars
Instead of Love, they would not shine.”
^This was beautiful. :)
Reviewed in India on March 20, 2022
“All Creatures know that some must die
That all the rest may take and eat;
Sooner or later, all transform
Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat.
But Man alone seeks Vengefulness,
And writes his abstract Laws on stone;
For this false Justice he has made,
He tortures limb and crushes bone.
Is this the image of a god?
My tooth for yours, your eye for mine?
Oh, if Revenge did move the stars
Instead of Love, they would not shine.”
^This was beautiful. :)
Questo romanzo, come il prosieguo della trilogia, come moltissimi altri suoi, è meraviglioso. C’è la capacità assoluta di costruire un mondo e di catapultarvi dentro il lettore senza spiegargli nulla eppure facendogli, a poco a poco, capire tutto, per quanto assurdo sia. È un libro quasi senza speranza, eppure si fa amare. La cura e la perfezione di stile e linguaggio costituiscono un piacere ad ogni pagina, per chi ama ascoltarli.
Spero che la notorietà acquisita con la serie TV avvicini più persone a questa autrice.