Oryx and Crake & The Year of the Flood

I recently picked up Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, her latest novel. It’s a dystopia, something Atwood does quite well, and I had high expectations which I’m happy to say were exceeded. It’s set in a future world that has been irrevocably altered by climate change, by genetic manipulation of plants and animals and humans, and by an escalated separation between the wealthy, corporate-sponsored elite and the poor who now live in the dangerous pleebland ghettos.

The Year of the Flood was preceded by Oryx and Crake, a companion book that actually covers the same span of time. In TYOTF, the main characters are several women who were living in the pleeblands with an environmental extremist group and who manage to survive the Waterless Flood, a worldwide outbreak of a deadly bioform which exterminates most of the earth’s human population. OAC follows Jimmy, his best friend Crake, and the object of both men’s affection, Oryx. In contrast, they are members of the upper class who spent their lives in the sanitized and secured gated-communities-on-crack compounds, safe from the dangerous world surrounding.

The details in both of these books are carefully thought out and the two books fit together so seamlessly, I was surprised to learn that they were published six years apart. I was worried that having read the more recent book first, I’d have spoiled something for myself with the first book, but that was not the case at all – one could read them in either order and have an equally satisfying experience.

I think that these books work so well is that the future depicted is so frighteningly believable. It’s easy to believe that climate change could end up creating extreme weather patterns and essentially changing the climate zones we currently have. It’s easy to believe that the way we’re currently playing around with genetically modified food and crops and pets could end up with weird and potentially dangerous hybrids roaming free (one look at the Monsanto “Round-Up Ready” situation is enough evidence that the best laid man-made plans rarely stay contained in nature).

There’s a whole lot more going on in both of these books, but I won’t do them justice – just go read them. Highly recommended. Reviewed from library copies.