2011.06.17 — The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood: Finished

Margaret Atwood.
The Year of the Flood.
UK: Virago Press (Little, Brown Book Group), 2010.
ISBN: 1844085643.

☆☆☆☆☆ out of ☆☆☆☆☆.

TYotF is an excellent companion to Oryx and Crake. Actually, it was so good that I finished the book before I had time to create my 'begun reading' blog.

At a high level, it was fun to see how, and how effectively, Atwood played with the characters crossing between the two books. At a more subtle level, how Atwood dexterously extended and deepened the shallowness of the pleeb world was extremely funny, very sad, and disturbingly reflective.

This world resonated with me more than that of O&C's, including the characters. In part because it is more close to the world that I see around me including the seeds of her descriptive dystopia. I found Atwood's slightly exagerated characterization of the lunatics and their groups to be on point and very real. The Gardener's Hymn book was a source of aeternal delight because it was both satirical and true at the same time.

Also the product names and uses, the social past times and entertainments, all delightfully echoed our marketed world. And at the same time Atwood somehow managed to pay a delightful homage to the world described by Orwell in 1984, while taking it along its own self-consistent path.

I think that the characters were more finely drawn in TYotF, and not just the females. Adam One and Zeb began flat, but this was perfectly described as if through the eyes of the resourceful, ever sceptical Toby. And as Toby grew the men became characters and not caricatures.

Atwood's characterizations are powerfully, simply done. For example, the vanity of Ren's mother is delightful described by a daughter with a wisdom that is beyond her years and not quite grounded, but is at the same time told as if by someone still innocent as they would be after having lived in the Gardener's hippy-like commune:

'What are you doing in the closet, darling?' said Lucerne [Ren's mother]. 'Come and have some lunch! You'll feell better soon!' She sounded chirpy: the crazier and more disturbed I acted, the better it was for her, because the less anyone would believe me if I told on her.

Her story was that I'd been traumatized by being stuck in among the warped, brainwashing cult folk. I had no way of proving her wrong. Anyway maybe I had been traumatized: I had nothing to compare myself with (252-3).

Atwood's use of voice in the book is interesting. The young girl who becomes a women in the story, Ren, is told in the first person present. Toby, who begins as a young women is told in third person past. I'm not sure why this worked, but it did. I've thought about it, and I think it worked because Atwood was emphasizing the voice of the innocent child with an unconscious wisdom as being alive in the immediate present. Whereas Toby felt dislocated and outside of her existence throughout the book. I've given a small example of Ren abve, and now for Toby's character. Atwood's description is masterful, and takes the entire book. I'll begin with Ren's childhood description:

... The Gardener kids had nicknames for all of the teachers. Pilar was the Fungus, Zeb was the Mad Adam, Stuart was the Screw because he built furniture. Mugi was the Muscle, Manushka was the Mucous, Rebecca was the Salt and Peppler, Burt was the Knob because he was bald. Toby was the Dry Witch. Witch because she was always mixing things up and pouring them into bottles and Dry because she was so thin and hard, and to tell her apart from Nuala, who was the Wet Witch because of her damp mouth and her wobbly bum, and because you could make her cry so easily.
...
We could never make the Dry Witch Toby cry. The boys said she was a hardass — she and Rebecca were the two hardest asses. Rebecca was jolly on the outside, but you did not push her buttons. As for Toby, she was leathery inside and out. 'Don't try it Shackleton,' she would say, even though her back was turned. Nuala was too kind to us, but Toby held us to account, and we trusted Toby more: you'd trust a rock more than a cake (74-5).

Now, here's Toby through her own, 3rd person eyes:

Gradually, Toby stopped thinking that she should leave the Gardeners. She didn't really believe in their creed, but she no longer disbelieved. One season blended into the next — rainy, stormy, hot and dry, cooler and dry, rainy and warm — and then one year into another. She wasn't quite a Gardener, yet she wasn't a pleeblander any more. She was neither the one nor the other (116).

And, finally:

How old will I be, thought Toby, before I can be that calm? She felt cut open (127).

Toby's ambivalence was perfeclty described, and made the Gordener's ostensible silliness both more real and more endearing. This was no small feat of writing!

I won't say that this book is better than O&C, but rather that reading both books elevates them above what they are if read singly. I am strongly tempted, now, to re-read O&C to seek out the extended subtle overlaps between the two.