Book of the Week

A few weeks ago I went to see noted animal researcher and activist Jane Goodall speak. The presentation began with a long slideshow beamed onto an immense screen; images of Jane with everyone from Angelina Jolie to the Dalai Lama seemed to bring her closer to sainthood. When Dr. Goodall took the podium, she spoke eloquently and directly to a packed audience for over an hour without referring to notecards or using a TelePrompter; at one point, when the evening's emcee tried to cut her off so that audience questions could begin Goodall and her supporters nearly excommunicated him.

She finished her spiel with a call to join an organization called "Roots and Shoots" that has chapters all over the world and allows people to volunteer with animals, with the earth, or with their fellow humans; testimonials from members included phrases like "Wherever I go, Roots and Shoots welcomes me" and "Roots and Shoots gives me a reason for living." At the end, a giant "Peace Dove" puppet made of bedsheets was toted out by little children while an earnest folksong about the Peace Dove symbol played on loudspeakers and Goodall raised her hands in -- inspiration? Welcome? Benediction?

This is not a strange digression; it's entirely relevant to Margaret Atwood's new novel "The Year of the Flood," in which a charismatic leader called Adam One encourages his back-to-nature movement God's Gardeners to live in an eco-friendly way (the group's hymns are as earnest, and terrible, as Goodall's Peace Dove jingle). Atwood, as usual, has not only cleverly anticipated current events (think of some parts of "The Handmaid's Tale"), she's anticipating some that we should start worrying about now.

While God's Gardeners are tone-deaf, dowdy, and not particularly intellectual, they have been warning humankind for years of something known as "The Waterless Flood" -- i.e., a plague that will fell life as it is known in the Atwoodian future (things are already pretty strange there compared to our own present; in this fractured society, human hair is implanted onto sheep so that fashion-conscious folks can have "whole-head implants" in any shade they fancy).

If this sounds a little familiar already, you're right: Atwood has taken a very interesting, brave, and amazingly successful leap by writing what might be called a "be-quel"-- "The Year of the Flood" is a retelling of her 2003 "Oryx and Crake." It's the same time period, the same place, but things are seen from a different perspective (really, perspectives), and readers will learn how the title characters of the earlier novel came to their current stations.

The brave part is that this is grim stuff. Who wants to re-read an account of destruction? We do, when it's told with Atwood's characteristic artistry and humor. Cyborg bees, luminescent rabbits, and the fierce "liobam" (you didn't really believe that the lion would lie down the with the lamb without procreating, did you?) are witty and a reminder from the author that God's Gardeners have forgotten that nature isn't all green; it's also "red in tooth and claw."

Atwood's multiple narrators -- Ren, a sex-club dancer; Toby, a member of the Gardeners; and Adam One -- can make it challenging to keep up with this brilliant Canadian novelist's mental acrobatics. She's told this story before, and so can fly through the air with the greatest of ease; that doesn't mean readers will find following her similarly simple. However, they should keep following and not give up, despite twinges in some little-used mental muscles, because Margaret Atwood's novels remain with you for a long time. Grim -- but so are fairy tales, and we need those to understand our world and our experience.