The Facts
Length: 431 pages.
Publisher: Vintage Canada.
This is Atwood's thirteenth novel. It is part two of three.
Quick Summary
Most of the novel travels through the flashbacks of Toby and Ren, "before the waterless flood." Ren is actually a minor character present in Oryx and Crake, but the character seemed to meld out of the narrative fold by the time I read The Year of the Flood. Regrettable: Ren's character actually picks up some steam by the time Flood ends, and now I'll have to re-read Oryx to examine Ren's influence on Jimmy's childhood.
Like its predecessor, this novel's narrative deals with the time leading up to the coming apocalypse, rather than the efforts to deal with the flood's consequences. If you're expecting The Road, you'll be disappointed. But we get a glimpse into the philosophy behind the apocalypse, and that's extremely valuable information to have if you're going to be treading back to the paths of Oryx.
Toby's tale is told in third-person, while Ren's is told in first-person. I'm not sure why Atwood did it. It seems to have an alienating effect.
Like its predecessor, this novel's narrative deals with the time leading up to the coming apocalypse, rather than the efforts to deal with the flood's consequences. If you're expecting The Road, you'll be disappointed. But we get a glimpse into the philosophy behind the apocalypse, and that's extremely valuable information to have if you're going to be treading back to the paths of Oryx.
Toby's tale is told in third-person, while Ren's is told in first-person. I'm not sure why Atwood did it. It seems to have an alienating effect.
The Good
Toby is amazing. I wasn't too fond of Ren, for most of the storyline: Ren's first-person recollection seems to permanently place in her in a thirteen-year-old's world view, but Toby's hardened, pragmatic, and infinitely more fun to read.
As I mentioned before, this novel does lend a great deal of background history into the more vital elements in Crake, like the MaddAddam videogame or the reasoning behind Crake's omnicide. Crake's character was always pretty hard to decode in the first novel, where he was a major character, but now we can understand him more, even though he's a minor character.
As I mentioned before, this novel does lend a great deal of background history into the more vital elements in Crake, like the MaddAddam videogame or the reasoning behind Crake's omnicide. Crake's character was always pretty hard to decode in the first novel, where he was a major character, but now we can understand him more, even though he's a minor character.
The Bad
What we really want to know, at the end of Oryx, is who Snowman sees after his return to the Crakers. This novel tells us (which might be a bit of a spoiler, if you can put two and two together: apologies). But then we realize - Atwood is great for this - we didn't want that. We wanted more. We wanted Snowman to meet them and then somehow continue on his merry adventures throughout the post-apocalyptic wasteland. And while we're not necessarily adamant on the merry part, Atwood's always kind of a literary tease when it comes to giving us the very basics of what we want. And then the novel ends! We only get a couple pages of what-happens-next.
Ren's a bit of a drag to read. When we see the same event through both Toby and Ren's eyes, Toby's perspective always seems to draw us in more deeply. I only started to really think Ren was cool until the final chapters. And then the novel ends!
*The Ugly
ugh did subtitles die or something
Final Thoughts
If you've read Oryx and Crake, read Flood. It adds a significant chunk of replay value (can you use that term in reference to books?) to Oryx, and gets you amped up for the yet-to-come final book. But the genetic splicing and cloning isn't really Atwood's forte - sometimes it seems like she's trying to imitate Brave New World in all the wrong ways. So I'd caution against starting with Flood as "Baby's First Atwood." Make sure you can read her first.
Arbitrary Score: 3.7 out of 5.
Next book: Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (2009)
