The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood

There are some authors whose books I will read regardless of what they are about.  Often, I don't even know what they are about, because if I see the author's name on the cover I don't even bother to read the synopsis.  There aren't many of them, but one of my must-read authors is Margaret Atwood.  Ever since reading The Handmaid's Tale in college I have been a huge fan of her work.  The Handmaid's Tale literally changed my life.  Before then, I called myself a feminist because I was raised to believe that men and women are equal, but I had never really thought deeply about the issues that kept women from being full participants in the world's political and social realms.  Reading The Handmaid's Tale was an "ah ha" moment for me, when I began to truly understand the moral and ethical questions behind feminism specifically, and social justice movements in general. While none of her other books has had quite the same effect on me, I have read all of them with a sense of wonder and admiration at Atwood's ability to create characters and stories that examine some of our most complex social dilemmas, not to mention her ability to use language in a way that is sometimes raw and powerful, and other times transcendentally beautiful.

The Year of the Flood is her latest novel, and it is a "sequel" to her novel Oryx and Crake, though much of it takes place during the same time period as the first, focusing on different characters.  The novel is set in the not-so-distant future, when corporations have attained global dominance, and the planet is quickly apporaching ecological disaster.  It is centered around two female protagonists, Ren and Toby.  Both become a part of an eco-cult called God's Gardeners, a group who eschews the technological advances of modern society and preaches a return to the days when food actually came from nature and people were not treated as fodder-either labor or consumer- for the large corporations.  They believe that a "waterless flood" is coming, one that will sweep away all of mankind's corruption of the natural world, and they want to be prepared when it does.

As dystopian fiction goes, Atwood's near-future is as gritty and dark as can be imagined.  Human depredation has reached new levels, with the corporations greedily commodatizing all aspects of human life, including the sex trade and drug trafficking.  Most of the population lives on the edges of society, scraping by in whatever way-legal or illegal-they can find.  Anyone who runs afoul of the corporations can find themselves snatched off the street by the CorpSeCorp, the security arm of the multinationals that has replaced the armed forces and police.  While the richest and smartest live in walled compounds run by the corporations, the rest are left in slums called the "pleebs".  In the dangerous, crime-ridden world of the pleebs, helping your neighbor is likely to get you arrested or killed, and so a self-defeating selfishness has become the norm.  Like all repressive governments, the complete control of the CorpSeCorp has turned person again person, causing them to act in ways that are against their own interest.

As speculative fiction goes, I sincerely hope that the future Atwood envisions is wrong, wrong, wrong.  Sadly, too much of it felt completely possible to me.  From genetic manipulation to the power of the corporations to the suppression of dissent and the oppression of the people in the name of making money-all too close to reality.  In addition, now that most reputable scientists and rational people have come to accept global warming as a fact, it is not too much of a stretch to think that the destruction of the natural world that prefaces so much of what happens in the book could be around the corner.

Sounds depressing, right?  And this book certainly has its highs and lows in terms of emotional impact.  But ultimately there is hope.  When the "waterless" flood finally comes, those people who learned about the natural world and how to survive without technology and consumer goods were able to survive the chaos of the de-evolution of our society, and were able to begin rebuilding a world more in balance with nature.  As The Year of the Flood ends, the survivors are still finding each other, and I can't help but wonder what the next months and years hold for them.  Several websites I've found have described this book as the second in the MaddAdam trilogy, so I assume that I may yet get my wish to find out if there is indeed hope for the future-of Atwood's fictional society, and for ours.

In a Perfect World, by Laura Kasischke

For some reason my book club chose two books about the end of civilzation as we know it for our August selections.  You'd think that during the glorious months of summer we would be reading hopeful books about love and family and fun, but not us!  We'd rather read about pandemics, natural disasters, food shortages and how to stay warm during what amounts to a nuclear winter!

Well, whatever the reason, we read Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer (soon to be reviewed by yours truly on Second Childhood Reviews) and In a Perfect World by Laura Kasischke.  While reading both books in a row made me want to start stocking up on canned goods and bottled water, I'm pleased with the selections.  Even though the books were about different kinds of disasters leading to the destruction of our comfortable way of life, it was a little like reading the same story told from tw points of view-Life As We Knew It has a teenage girl for a narrator, while In a Perfect World is told from the perspective of a woman in her 30s.  But mood of both books was both heartwrenching and ultimately hopeful.

In a Perfect World is the story of Jiselle, a flight attendant, always the bridesmaid, never the bride.  When handsome, charming Capt. Mark Dorn starts to court her on their frequent transatlantic flights together, she is honored, and a little bewildered.  When he proposes to her just three months after they start dating, she is quick to say yes.  The catch-he wants her to quit her job and stay in Wisconsin to raise his three children-two teenage daughters and an eight year old son.  Despite her misgivings, and the hostility of the older children, she becomes a stay-at-home stepmom.  Looming on the horizon is a disaster with global implications-a new disease, called the Phoenix Flu, that starts as a small epidemic but soon becomes a worldwide threat.  When Mark and his plane are detained in Germany, Jiselle is left alone with the children to survive the best they can.

There are really layers of story going on in this novel.  First, there is the dubious "love" story between Mark and Jiselle.  As I was reading I was pretty sure I knew how it was going to turn out, but I also knew with the certainty of someone who has also convinced herself that a love is true that Jiselle as going to get sucked in.  Then there is the story of Jiselle's relationship with the children.  While I've never been a step-mother, I am married to one, and I know first-hand how difficult it can be to negotiate the unspoken rules that make each family function.  And, of course, at its essence this is a survival story, one that pits humans and their institutions against the vagaries of the natural world.  This as a theme is not uncommon in contemporary literature.  As we discover more about global warming and the impact that humans have on the planet more and more authors are exploring this idea of man against nature.  That theme has existed in literature for much longer than our current climate crisis, but unlike some of those earlier stories, in today's literature nature usually wins, forcing humans to adapt to the new reality of life without the conveniences we have come to rely on.

One of the most interesting things about the story, to me, is the fact that Kasischke chose America as the place where the pandemic begins, and created a world where it was Americans who were denied access to foreign countries, and American products being turned away from prots worldwide, and American flights that weren't allowed to land at the world's airports.  Though I don't know the author's intent, the sory felt like an allegory for the way that American culture is exported globally, and the idea that American commercialism and political dominance could be a disease spreading around the globe was inescapable for me.  If nothing else, that particular plot point turned the tables on the usual way of things, with America being the arbiter of who and what is worthy to enter our boundaries.  I can't believe that was completely accidental on Kasischke's part.  All in all, this was an enjoyable, thought-provoking way to spend a beautiful summer day-even if I've probably bought a few too many cans of tuna in the last week or so!