The Year of the Flood

Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners - a religion devoted
to the melding of science and religion, the preservation of all
species, the tending of the Earth, and the cultivation of bees and
organic crops on flat rooftops - has long predicted the Waterless
Flood. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women
have avoided it: the young trapeze-dancer, Ren, locked into the
high-end sex club, Scales and Tails; and former SecretBurgers
meat-slinger turned Gardener, Toby, barricaded into the luxurious
AnooYoo Spa, where many of the treatments are edible.

Have
others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda, or the MaddAddam
eco-fighters? Ren's one-time teenage lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous
Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not
to mention the CorpSeCorps, the shadowy and corrupt policing force of
the ruling powers...

Meanwhile, in the natural world, gene-spliced
life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep
with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his
intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through a ruined world, singing
their devotional hymns and faithful to their creed and to their Saints
- Saint Francis Assisi, Saint Rachel Carson, and Saint Al Gore among
them - what odds for Ren and Toby, and for the human race?

By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most effective.