The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

I count Margaret Atwood among my favourite writers but I do find her scifi stuff creepy. This book is a sequel to Oryx and Crake, which I didn’t like a lot. It is set at the same time and involves a different set of characters who are affected by Crake’s actions in setting off a pandemic virus that wipes out the world. Some of the characters from Oryx and Crake appear in this as well, so it’s quirky and, I’m sorry, contrived. Essentially it tracks the wiping out of the population of the genetically modified world, who live in walled compounds or crime-ridden pleeblands. In this book the Gardeners cult plays a central role. They’re fundamentalist greenies, who predict the end of the world, and plant little arks of supplies around the place to ensure they survive. The story is told first person by Ren/Brenda, a child who grows up in the Gardeners commune but is returned to the compound, and in third person from Toby’s point of view – she’s a refugee from violence who becomes a sort of strong, herbalist beekeeper, saint type of woman. The plot is simple – the virus, the fall, the struggle to survive, the beginnings of reconstruction – and the characters straightforward, so the story rests on a combination of the horrific detail of human behaviour under stress and the what-next shock value of all the things that this futuristic world has invented and the way values have changed, which is almost voyeuristic and a bit scary as some if it is not beyond the realms of possibility. 3 stars