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The Year of the Flood
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Read The Year of the Flood
MaddAddam Trilogy: Book 2

The Year of the Flood (2009) (edit title/settings)

by Margaret Atwood (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

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

Summary edit see section history

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)

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 that tries to reconcile religion and science.

Characters/People edit see section history

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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
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it’s a sea on which you float.
    Highlighted by 78 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 62 Kindle customers
  • Just remember, dear Friends: What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.
    Highlighted by 52 Kindle customers
  • Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.
    Highlighted by 51 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 51 Kindle customers
  • To Name is — we hope — to greet; to draw another towards one’s self.
    Highlighted by 41 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 39 Kindle customers
  • You can fall in love with anybody — a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules.
    Highlighted by 35 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 31 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 24 Kindle customers
Show all 19 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

  • Scales and Tails: A strip club in the Lagoon
  • Buenavista: An abandoned apartment building inhabited by 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
  • Sticky Zone: The medic area of Scales and Tails; girls would remain sealed here until deemed medically safe
  • AnooYoo 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
  • Wisconsin: Destination of Amanda's travels and art experiments

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

Glossary edit see section history

  • Mo'hairs: genetically engineered sheep that grow colorful 'hair' for hair transplants.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 2 of 3 in MaddAddam Trilogy. (standard series)

Preceded by Oryx and Crake, and followed by Maddaddam .

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Margaret Atwood (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Bernadette Dunne (Narrator)
  2. Katie MacNichol (Narrator)
  3. Mark Bramhall (Narrator)
  4. Lorelei King (Narrator)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Country: Canada
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN: 978-0747585169
Page Count: 448

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PR9199.3.A8 Y43 2010
  • Dewey: 813.54

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

  • MaddAddam Trilogy: Margaret Atwood gives readers a hint as to what comes after The Year of the Flood.

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Oryx and Crake
  • The Handmaid's Tale
  • South of Broad
  • The Brutal Telling
  • The Rapture
  • Sweet Mary : a novel
  • Gifts of War: A Novel
  • Sacred Hearts
  • The Day the Falls Stood Still
  • When We Were Romans
  • Chronic City
  • Sag Harbor

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

   
  • Oryx and Crake

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