Year of the (Chilled) Flood

Okay, okay, I'll blog!!! Note to self: when you forget your log in password, it probably means you haven't blogged in a while (!)

Just finished the Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. I kind of have a love/hate thing going on for her books. I mean, I definitely respect her, and where she sits in the Canadian Canon. Though, I have uneasy memories of reading the Handmaid's Tale (my favorite, until YOF). If I was uneasy before, now I am down right chilled to the bone (or better, sacred shitless). The prophetic voice in this novel is turned up to 11. Perhaps, because I am surrounded by people in my life that remind me of what we have done (and are doing) to our planet, climate change, pandemics, and population explosion are just a few of the things that haunt my daymares.

McCarthy's Road put forward a dark vision that hard to read. Atwood, in a way, does him one better. Now, let me be straight, The Road is a much better book IMO, than YOF (lol, btw and wtf). But Atwood inhabits this dystopian future with characters I can actually relate to, as opposed to the boy and the father in The Road. YOF has flaws, lots of them - the theology of the Gardners sets my teeth on edge; there are too many coincidental meetings of characters; and sometimes the emotion gets a bit syrupy. But then when I read her list of Saints (Saint David Suzuki, Saint Rachel Carson), I get a bit of a chill. Actually, a helluva chill.

Are we going to look back on this book as one of the many warnings of the death of our society? Maybe I am still writing out of my "spooked" zone. And I have to remember this is a novel - but like some of Philip K. Dick's work, a lot of it might just come true.

I need to go read something light. Like maybe an Archie comic. All is fine in Riverdale. Always.