The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

 

The earth as we know it no longer exists.

The world is an empty place, destroyed by the Waterless Flood. It is a world where gene spliced animals now roam free; animals like liobams (a lion and lamb hybrid) and Mo’Hairs (multi-coloured sheep used for growing hair replacements) and rakunks (racoon and skunk hybrids).

It is no longer a world for humans.

But yet, two people have survived the Waterless Flood: Toby is holed up inside of AnooYoo, a health spa that catered to the rich and Ren, locked inside a safe room inside Scales and Tales, a high end sex club.

While both continue to fight the land and the animals in order to survive, they both reflect on how they arrived at their places in life. Through a series of flashbacks, we’re shown Ren and Toby’s story and we learn about the Gods Gardeners.

Both were involved with The Gods Gardeners, a religious sect that preached love for everything, every plant and every animal. They are a religious sect that is separated from regular life and shunned by society at large.

But The Gods Gardeners is also a sect that hides secrets. People do not have a past, only a future. But secrets, even if they are not spoken, have a way of breaking free, despite our wish to keep them silent…

My meagre plot summary in no way comes close to covering the entirety of the plot in The Year of the Flood. It is an epic, sprawling novel that moves back and forth between past, present and future effortlessly.

There is no way I could convey to you everything that is in this novel. The Year of the Flood touches on a multitude of subjects including science, religion, the environment, love, desire, cannibalism, war and so on. It would at first glance that there is too much that is covered in The Year of the Flood, that Atwood has filled it too full.

But it is not too full; Atwood manages to pull of the impossible and creates an incredible novel that speaks to the heart, to the mind and to the spirit.

I was incredibly excited when I learned that Atwood’s new novel would be a sequel to Oryx and Crake, perhaps my most favourite of Atwood’s novels. I wondered if she’d be able to write as good a novel as Oryx and Crake a second time. Thankfully, The Year of the Flood is better.

Though the future she presents is grim, there is a dark humour present. Her characters are also incredibly realized and well developed. You care about these people from the first page. It is almost impossible not to.

In the end, though, The Year of the Flood wasn’t a sequel. It is more of a companion book to Oryx and Crake. In fact, The Year of the Flood covers the same time period and overlaps with the plot of Oryx and Crake.

Also, there is a balance between the two. In Oryx and Crake, we focused a lot on the relationship between men: between Snowman and his father, Crake and his father, between Crake and Snowman themselves. In The year of the Flood, the characters that Atwood focuses on and develops are female: Toby and Ren, Amanda Payne and more.

It is a story of the love between daughters, between young girls and elder women, a story of friendship between girls that grow into women. Where Oryx and Crake was inherently male, The Year of the Flood is inherently female.

Though The Year of the Flood is told from Ren and Toby’s point of view, the novel is really about the story of three women (Ren, Toby and Amanda) and their will to survive in a cruel and harsh world. It is a story of hope, despite all odds. A story of the power of love.

Once again, Atwood presents us with a dark novel tinged with humour that is unclassifiable. Despite the darkness, I did not want The Year of the Flood to end. Part parable, part science fiction, part speculative fiction, part literary tale, part cautionary myth, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most dark and her most incredible.

Atwood shows us that even in the darkness there is light. And even in the most cruel of situations, there is beauty.

The Bride’s Farewell by Meg Rosoff

 

I have just finished an amazing book.

It is part fairy tale, part love story. It is a cross between Charles Dickens and Lemony Snicket. It is part Brothers Grimm and part historical melodrama.

In other words, it is unclassifiable.

I am speaking of The Bride’s Farewell, the new novel by the New York Bestselling, Carnigie Award Winning author Meg Rosoff. This is her fourth novel for young adults, but even there I would say that genre does not suit her.

Meg’s novels are for young adults in that they feature a younger cast of characters. But the themes her books deal with are much more adult; incredibly darker and moodier than most juvenile fiction published today.

Her first novel, How I Live Now, featured a young girl and her cousin that have survived a bombing in a future not unlike ours; and fell in love. Her second novel, Just In Case, concerns a boy who, to escape Fate, reinvents himself; he even imagines an invisible dog for himself that other people can see. Her third novel, What I Was, can be described as a boarding house love story between two boys.

Quite obviously, Meg Rosoff never writes the same book twice.

I was eagerly awaiting to see what Meg Rosoff would give us with The Bride’s Farewell. I wondered what the setting would be. In Rosoff’s novels, the characters and the place around them play equally important roles.

She is a beautiful storyteller. For me, she seems to have written each of her books carefully, choosing each word so that it feels right. Though her books may be short in length (each of her four novels are around the 200 something page count), the emotion and the power in her novels makes the books feel stronger, somehow; more vibrant.

I’m always a little nervous when I begin a Meg Rosoff novel. Since no two stories are the same, I wonder where she is going to take me; what story she is going to tell. Her novels remind me of the novel in verse books written by Ellen Hopkins. Though Rosoff writes in prose, her books mirror Hopkins’ in that they always present us with stories that are engaging, beautifully written and emotionally charged. And each time you open one of their novels you wonder where you are going to end up.

When I read a Meg Rosoff novel, I treat the book as if I am pursuing a gem. So clearly I had high expectations for The Bride’s Farewell. Meg Rosoff’s new novel has been one of my most anticipated reads of 2009.

I am delighted to say that I was not disappointed in the least. 

Quite the contrary, in fact. I think that The Bride’s Farewell is Rosoff’s best book to date. It concerns sixteen year old Pell Ridley who runs away from her home on her wedding day in the year of eighteen hundred and fifty something.

She leaves home with only her horse Jack and her brother Bean, a boy who does not speak. What she returns with is so much more.

I won’t say any more of the plot then that, only to say that you should experience the story as I did. Meg Rosoff writes novels that are not just merely read; they are explored. Each page brings you deeper into the story of Pell and what happens to her that, by the end, you will never want to leave her world. 

Ultimately, The Brides Farewell is really about three things: It is about family and courage. And the incredible power of love.

Through stunning words, vivid imagery, Meg Rosoff has given us a delightful historical novel that reminds us of something important.

She reminds us that we cannot get where we are going, if we do not remember where we came from.

Though the book may seem grim at times, The Bride’s Farewell is ultimately a joyous novel about the search for who we are and the happiness we find at discovering our place in the world.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

 

Connie Goodwin has just achieved her life’s dream: candidacy for the PHD program at Harvard. She must provide her mentor with a PHD dissertation topic shortly. He encourages her to look for a new, unheard of primary research source. But there are other things on her mind.

Her New Age mother, Grace, has asked her to clean out her Grandmother’s house. Not having anything to do aside from research, Connie agrees, despite a wish to do the exact opposite. While cleaning the house, she finds a key tucked inside of an old bible.

Inside the empty shaft of the key is a slip of paper. On the paper is a name: Deliverance Dane. As she digs into the story of Deliverance Dane, Connie realizes that Deliverance was a Witch, accused during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.

But what she doesn’t know is that she is connected to Deliverance in an incredible way. And, though Connie doesn’t believe in Witchcraft, what does she do when she is given proof that Witchcraft actually exists?

As she delves further into the mystery surrounding Deliverance Day, she realizes that she is connected to her, and the Salem Witch Trials, in a way that she could not imagine.

This is by far one of my favourite books of 2009 and I can’t wait to read the authors next book. She deftly weaves history, romance, suspense, intrigue and magic into one of the most amazing novels ever written.

Normally, books set in modern day that have a historical background read like text books. The author tries to incorporate the history we need to know and ends up dragging down the storyline, making it lag. Not so in The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. Though we do come away with a thorough history of The Salem Witch Trials, and its causes, the book is written in a breezy, easy to read manner.

Connie is an incredibly likeable character who, though bookish, is a strong woman, a refreshing change from a lot of fiction out there today. I also love the fact that the author introduced the love interest, Sam, so well; their meeting and the build up of their relationship was incredibly natural and very sweet.

If you’re looking for the special book this summer, look no further than The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. With enough history, romance, magic and surprise twists, it’s writing at its best and is pure magic.

Tangled Roots by Sue Guiney

 

There is something wrong with John.

He should be happy. He knows this. His niece, Amanda, has just married her fiancée. He is well off. He is a respected physics professor. He has money in the bank and can live comfortably for some time. He is good looking and women still find him attractive. He has money to spare and everything in his life is ordered and in it’s proper place.

But still, something is bothering him, something is eating away at him from the inside. John is obsessed with time. He calculates it, studies it, peers at it day in and day out. But he can’t control it. He can’t control his past, present or his future. His is angry at the world, furious for reasons he can’t put into words. But he knows that the trouble started in London.

That the trouble started with his mother.

John does not have fond memories of his mother. After a family tragedy, his mother was a different person. She was no longer his mother but someone more. She was different, her habits were different. And she no longer had time to be his mother. Though he is loathe to admit it, John still carries those scars of what he sees as her betrayal.

While John has one way of looking at things, his own secrets to hide, his mother has her own stories to tell. Grace remembers everything; every word, every occasion, every utterance. She tells her story, tells what really happened, her voice firmly rooted in the past.

She is a consummate storyteller, a spinner of tales with the occasional exaggeration thrown in for good measure. Through her eyes, we hear a different side of things and discover some incredible secrets about life itself.

And though John is loath to go back to London, where all the trouble with his mother started, he will have to go. And what he finds there may be his undoing…

There is no way that my meager plot summary can ever hope to do justice to Tangled Roots. There is so much substance, so much emotion and so much story tucked between the covers of this incredible novel that it would take me pages and pages to describe every delicious detail.

Tangled Roots isn’t a novel you read. It’s a novel you experience. Though at first the shifting of narrators is a bit jarring, it slowly grows to comfort you. You will be reading about John, absorbed in his troubles and turn the page to find Grace waiting for you like an old friend. Though John and Grace’s stories are incredibly different, one rooted in the present, one in the past, both stories are the same and grow from the same bond.

Part mystery, part education on physics, part family drama, part oral history, Tangled Roots is a novel that defies classification. It is also incredibly, wonderfully beautiful. Sue Guiney has written a novel of such beauty, such seemingly simple storylines that, before you know it, the roots of the story have grown into you and won’t let go until you finish the last page.

Sue Guiney has also written a novel that everyone can identify with. How many of us have had troubles with our mothers? How many of us have had trouble with our lives? How many of us struggle with the past that has made us as we are in the present? How many of us struggle with our present so our future is controllable?

Guiney has given us two distinctly different narrators, but we can relate to both of them. She has given us a story of physics, baseball and human nature and the power of story. John and Grace become friends, confidants when the book is done and I know that they will haunt me forever.

Tangled Roots is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. I urge you, plead with you to read Tangled Roots. It will dip its roots into your imagination and you will never want it to let go.