Posted on Sun, Oct. 18, 2009

Will we end in fire or will we end in ice? Or what if we aren’t around long enough for the climate to kill us — what if a plague, whether natural or the result of our own meddling in nature, is the real threat?

“The Year of the Flood” — the year the plague hits — is the endpoint rather than the beginning of Margaret Atwood’s imaginative, gripping new novel. Set in the same dystopian future Atwood envisioned in 2002’s “Oryx and Crake,” “Flood” is neither a sequel nor a prequel — it runs concurrently, almost to the day, but the focus is different.

“Oryx and Crake” is a deep, complex, at times playfully satirical cautionary tale about environmental devastation and meddling with nature; “The Year of the Flood” takes a more personal, philosophical look at the same society, while not losing the edge. Some of the events and characters overlap, but readers don’t need to have read the earlier book to appreciate the later one, though the pair provides an even richer experience than either one alone.

“The Year of the Flood” follows two characters, Ren and Toby, through more than a decade of their lives. Both are members of God’s Gardeners, a religious sect in the Pleeblands — those parts of society not under corporate control that have by this point devolved into near-anarchy. God’s Gardeners promote peace, harmony among creatures and a simple lifestyle; as such they are considered “fringe” at first, and later labeled subversives or terrorists.

Ren arrives as a child, when her mother leaves a stifling life in a corporate Compound; Toby arrives as a young woman fleeing imminent danger from her misogynistic boss at SecretBurger. We learn their histories and we see how they survive in the world, a world of genetic engineering, frequent species extinctions and a climate out of whack.

Their lives intertwine for a while, and then diverge, each having departed the main Gardener group with a mindset, and a skill set, that ends up serving them well when the Flood comes. And as they realize everyone around them is dead, each fears she may be henceforth alone, while holding on to the fragile hope that she is not.

Atwood’s well-conceived future is filled with lively detail — she trains her attention on seemingly small facets of life, resulting in a full sensory perception of what today’s technology could sow for tomorrow: the sights and sounds and smells of Pleeblands and Compounds, the different kinds of fear and control each engenders, and the outlandish animals (and people) resulting from genetic tinkering.

And she has developed God’s Gardeners beyond what mere labels can describe: She has created an entire theology, complete with hymns, sermons, dogma and even saints’ days (with such saints as Saint Farley Mowat of the Wolves and Saint Euell of Wild Foods), and, later, the requisite schism.

But for all the attention Atwood has given to the world her characters inhabit, she has not shorted the story. We know the Flood is coming — the book starts with it. But the two women’s stories pull us in and keep us enthralled. The plotting slows at times — but never plods — in order to unspool the details, but then races ahead with the pace of a thriller.

Thrown in with all of this are some weighty questions for readers to consider: What does it mean to be a member of the human race? What is our responsibility to the planet, to God, to other species and to each other? Should we alter what has developed naturally, and, if so, how much? “The Year of the Flood” doesn’t have all the answers — Atwood makes her own positions clear on some of the issues — but plants the seeds of thought in readers, before the flood comes.

Lisa McLendon is deputy copy desk chief at The Eagle. Reach her at lmclendon@wichitaeagle.com.