I finished Margaret Atwood's "The Year of The Flood" a while ago. I read it during midterm time and I ended up reading it than studying. I found it so interesting. 
This is not the type of book i'd choose to read on my own time, but that's the amazing thing about reading "mandatory" books.. usually you end up enjoying them. Or this was the case for me.

Again, i've mentioned that I don't have a very religious background or an understanding of religious beliefs. Hence why some references in this book I didn't.. and still don't understand. 

Talking with one of my friends, and with Kristina is my group I've also been told that a lot of references in the book can relate to Atwood's previous novel Oryx and Crake. Not knowing this book though hasn't made The Year of The Flood any different. It is just like reading the novel and understanding it all for the first time without needing to know background information. 

I enjoyed the parts focused on the group called God's Gardeners. GG is a religion devoted to science, religion, and nature. You can see this with the genetically engineered animals, such as the lioamb, the focus on God, and the recycle and reuse methods used by this group. They do not waste anything. 

After searching the WWW, i came across a really good site. It is a review found in The Sunday Times. It is called "The apocalypse and Yoo: Margaret Atwood's high-tech dystopia is as observational as it is fantastical." Written by M. John Harrison.  

From the article: summing up GG's.

"Despite the hyperbole, the Flood – much like the story itself – is a throwaway: something to get things going for the reader, and a means of introducing us to God’s Gardeners. This organization – the rump of the Green movement, a loose affiliation of scientists, eco-warriors, organic farming obsessives and gentle, talented loonies – has hidden in plain sight for decades, building its metaphorical ark, a “belief bias” or meme which, combining religion and science, will not only save the planet but continue to confer an evolutionary advantage on the survivors. The Gardeners, as easily recognizable as the pleebs, appear to CorpSeCorps (and often, it must be said, to the reader of The Year of the Flood) to be a “clutch of sweet but delusional eccentrics”. They keep bees. They farm the rooftops of the pleeblands, and grow mushrooms in abandoned cellars. Recycle and reuse, they teach their children: there’s no such thing as garbage, only matter that hasn’t been put to proper use. In the malls, the pleebs make fun of them. At the Tree of Life Natural Materials Exchange, they sell traditional organic produce to the company wives who, bored and restless, will try anything – even ethical consumption – as a cure. They consolidate their half-biblical, half-scientific origin myth, and keep strange Saints’ Days – St Mendel’s Day, St Maria Sibylla Merian of Insect Metamorphosis Day, St Alan Sparrow of Clean Air Day – on each of which Adam One, their apparently bumbling leader, delivers a bland but heavily themed address"

Overall I enjoyed this book. I liked how it went between the two main characters, Ren and Toby, and their interpretations of the same situation. 
Class time. Blog later. 
11/25/2010 07:41:40 am

Some good beginning material here, I enjoy the references to the Green Movement, because it puts the premise of the novel - the Waterless Flood' into a context that I identify with -- I think we are 'going to hell in a hand basket .... if we don't act more responsibly toward our environment ... sooner then soon.

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