The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam Trilogy 2) by Margaret Atwood

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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... read more

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The novel recounts the experiences of two young women, Toby and Ren, in a dystopian world which only become more chaotic when many die from an lethal viral infection, known as the Waterless Flood. The two meet for a short-time when each are residents in God's Gardeners, a religious commune... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Characters/People edit see section history

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Toby: One of the main female characters of the book; teasing referred to as Dry Witch by the children; an active member (though a questioning one) of the religious group, the Gardeners
Ren: The other main female character, we see from childhood to womanhood through the book; a member of God's Gardeners and daughter of Lucerne
Adam One: Leader of God's Gardeners
Amanda: Ren's friend; strong female character that Toby states is "trouble"
Bernice: Ren's friend before Amanda; daughter of Veena
Zeb: A member of God's Gardeners; Ren's stepfather
Crake/Glenn: A code name for a minor character who is part of the group MaddAdam; Greg
Oryx: The girlfriend / partner of Crake
Pilar: A member of God's Gardeners
Nuala: A member of God's Gardeners; a flirt
Rebecca: A member of God's Gardeners
Burt: A member of God's Gardeners
Crozier: A member of God's Gardeners; a child
Shackleton: A member of God's Gardeners; a child
Oates: A member of God's Gardeners; a child and brother to Crozier and Shackleton
Veena: A member of God's Gardeners; mother of Bernice
Katuro: A member of God's Gardeners
Blanco: In charge of a SecretBurger; hurt Toby in her past
Jimmy/Snowman: Ren's love in HealthWyzer High
Martha Graham: College for students that study liberal arts
Rachel: Add a description of this character.
Frank
Philo: the "Frog" in the Gardeners; appears to be the group burnout
Dian
Euell
Stuart
Muffy
Pilaf
Saint Julian
Adam Thirteen
Quill
Savona
Wakulla
Mugi
Mordis: the owner of Scales and Tails; provides a father-like role to Ren
Toby: After the fourth or fifth time she knew she had to make a decision: did she want to live or did she want to die? If die, there were quicker ways. If live, she had to live differently.

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Quotes edit see section history

“Nothing wrecks your nails like a lethal pandemic plague.”
Amanda Payne
“If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, she'd be thinking, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time.”
“Adam One used to say, If you can't stop the waves, go sailing.”
“They view us as as twisted fanatics who combine food extremism with bad fashion sense and a puritanical attitude towards shopping.”
Adam One
“After the fourth or fifth time she knew she had to make a decision: did she want to live or did she want to die? If die, there were quicker ways. If live, she had to live differently.”
Toby
“In any case, time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it’s a sea on which you float.”
Pilar
“Confronted by too much emptiness, said Adam One, the brain invents. Loneliness creates company as thirst creates water. How many sailors have been wrecked in pursuit of islands that were merely a shimmering?”
Toby
“Adam One sighed. “We should not expect too much from faith,” he said. “Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God.””
Adam One
“It’s kind of shocking to hear Toby called a babe: sort of like calling God a stud muffin.”
Ren

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time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it’s a sea on which you float.
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Glenn used to say the reason you can’t really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, “I’ll be dead,” you’ve said the word I, and so you’re still alive inside the sentence. And that’s how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul — it was a consequence of grammar. And so was God, because as soon as there’s a past tense, there has to be a past before the past, and you keep going back in time until you get to I don’t know, and that’s what God is.
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Just remember, dear Friends: What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.
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Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.
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According to Adam One, the Fall of Man was multidimensional. The ancestral primates fell out of the trees; then they fell from vegetarianism into meat-eating. Then they fell from instinct into reason, and thus into technology; from simple signals into complex grammar, and thus into humanity; from firelessness into fire, and thence into weaponry; and from seasonal mating into an incessant sexual twitching. Then they fell from a joyous life in the moment into the anxious contemplation of the vanished past and the distant future.
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To Name is — we hope — to greet; to draw another towards one’s self.
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Nature full strength is more than we can take, Adam One used to say. It’s a potent hallucinogen, a soporific, for the untrained Soul. We’re no longer at home in it. We need to dilute it. We can’t drink it straight. And God is the same. Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered.
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You can fall in love with anybody — a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules.
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If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, she’d be thinking, try jumping off the roof: death’s a sure-fire method for stopping time.
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The Human moral keyboard is limited, Adam One used to say: there’s nothing you can play on it that hasn’t been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.
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Setting & Locations edit see section history

Scales and Tails: A strip club in the Lagoon
Buenavista: an abandoned apartment building that inhabited some of the Gardeners
Heritage Park: a park that was used as burial grounds for deceased Gardeners
Painball: An alternative to the death penalty; two teams (Red Team and Gold Team) fight to the death in a forest while viewers can watch; sometimes they are re-released to the public
Garden: the main garden was on the rooftop
Wisconsin: destination of Amanda's travels and art experiments
Sticky Zone: The medic area of Scales and Tails; girls would remain sealed here until deemed medically safe
Spa: former establishment where women would receive aesthetic treatments; later inhabited by Toby after the Waterless Flood
Healthwyzer: A heavily secured, anesthetized community where medical experimenters and their families live; most medical experiments are conducted here

First Sentence edit see section history

Who is it tends the garden? The garden oh so green, It was once the finest garden that ever has been seen, and in it Gods dear creatures did swim and fly and play, but then came greedy spoilers and killed them all away.

Table of Contents edit see section history

xi. The Garden
1. The year of the Flood
2. Creation Day
3. The Feast of Adam and All Primates
4. The Festival of Arks
5. Saint Euell of Wild Floods
6. Mole Day
7. April Fish
8. The Feast of Serpent Wisdom
9. Pollination Day
10. Saint Dian, Martyr
11. Predator Day
12. Saint Rachel and All Birds
13. Saint Terry and All Wayfarers
14. Saint Julian and All Souls