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The Flood
President Bliss is handling a tricky situation with customary brio, but after months of ceaseless rain the city is sinking under the floods. The rich are safe on high ground, but the poor are getting damper in their packed tower blocks, and the fanatical ‘Last Days’ sect is recruiting thousands.
When at last the sun breaks through the clouds Lottie heads off to the opera, husband Harold listens to jazz and their ditsy teenage daughter Lola fights capitalism by bunking off school. Shirley takes her twin boys to the zoo. The Government – eager to distract attention from a foreign war it has waged – announces a spectacular City Gala. But not even TV astrologer Davey Lucas can predict the extraordinary climax that ensues.
Maggie Gee was chosen as one of Granta’s ‘Best Young British Novelists’ in 1983. Since then she has published eight novels to great acclaim, including Grace, The Ice People, Light Years and The White Family which was shortlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction and for the International Impac Dublin Literary Award 2004. She is the first woman Chair of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London.
When at last the sun breaks through the clouds Lottie heads off to the opera, husband Harold listens to jazz and their ditsy teenage daughter Lola fights capitalism by bunking off school. Shirley takes her twin boys to the zoo. The Government – eager to distract attention from a foreign war it has waged – announces a spectacular City Gala. But not even TV astrologer Davey Lucas can predict the extraordinary climax that ensues.
Maggie Gee was chosen as one of Granta’s ‘Best Young British Novelists’ in 1983. Since then she has published eight novels to great acclaim, including Grace, The Ice People, Light Years and The White Family which was shortlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction and for the International Impac Dublin Literary Award 2004. She is the first woman Chair of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London.
328 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2005
About the author
Maggie Gee
40 books54 followersMaggie Gee is an English novelist. She was born in Poole, Dorset, then moved to the Midlands and later to Sussex. She was educated at state schools and at Oxford University (MA, B Litt). She later worked in publishing and then had a research post at Wolverhampton Polytechnic where she completed the department's first PhD. She has written eleven novels and a collection of short stories, and was the first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, 2004-2008. She is now one of the Vice-Presidents of the RSL and Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. She has also served on the Society of Authors' management committee and the government's Public Lending Right committee. Her seventh novel, The White Family, was shortlisted for the 2003 Orange Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
She writes in a broadly modernist tradition, in that her books have a strong overall sense of pattern and meaning, but her writing is characterised by political and social awareness. She turns a satirical eye on contemporary society but is affectionate towards her characters and has an unironised sense of the beauty of the natural world. Her human beings are biological as well as social creatures, partly because of the influence of science and in particular evolutionary biology on her thinking. Where are The Snows, The Ice People and The Flood have all dealt with the near or distant future. She writes through male characters as often as she does through female characters.
The individual human concerns that her stories address include the difficulties of resolving the conflict between total unselfishness, which often leads to secret unhappiness and resentment against the beneficiaries, and selfishness, which can lead to the unhappiness of others, particularly of children. This is a typical quandary of late-20th and early-21st-century women, but it is also a concern for privileged, wealthy, long-lived western human beings as a whole, and widens into global concerns about wealth and poverty and climate change. Her books also explore how the human species relates to non-human animals and to the natural world as a whole. Two of her books, The White Family and My Cleaner, have had racism as a central theme, dealt with as a tragedy in The White Family but as a comedy in My Cleaner. She is currently writing a memoir called My Animal Life. In 2009 she published "My Driver", a second novel with many of the same characters as My Cleaner, but this time set in Uganda during a time of tension with neighbouring DRC Congo.
Maggie Gee lives in London with her husband, the writer and broadcaster Nicholas Rankin, an author, and their daughter Rosa.
She writes in a broadly modernist tradition, in that her books have a strong overall sense of pattern and meaning, but her writing is characterised by political and social awareness. She turns a satirical eye on contemporary society but is affectionate towards her characters and has an unironised sense of the beauty of the natural world. Her human beings are biological as well as social creatures, partly because of the influence of science and in particular evolutionary biology on her thinking. Where are The Snows, The Ice People and The Flood have all dealt with the near or distant future. She writes through male characters as often as she does through female characters.
The individual human concerns that her stories address include the difficulties of resolving the conflict between total unselfishness, which often leads to secret unhappiness and resentment against the beneficiaries, and selfishness, which can lead to the unhappiness of others, particularly of children. This is a typical quandary of late-20th and early-21st-century women, but it is also a concern for privileged, wealthy, long-lived western human beings as a whole, and widens into global concerns about wealth and poverty and climate change. Her books also explore how the human species relates to non-human animals and to the natural world as a whole. Two of her books, The White Family and My Cleaner, have had racism as a central theme, dealt with as a tragedy in The White Family but as a comedy in My Cleaner. She is currently writing a memoir called My Animal Life. In 2009 she published "My Driver", a second novel with many of the same characters as My Cleaner, but this time set in Uganda during a time of tension with neighbouring DRC Congo.
Maggie Gee lives in London with her husband, the writer and broadcaster Nicholas Rankin, an author, and their daughter Rosa.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
April 14, 2023
⭐️⭐️ 2.25
Read for my University Degree.
This seemed like the author was trying to rebuke racists, homophones, all religions, etc. by having her characters adamant they were not such people, or using satire or mocking to show they were, in fact, such people and their ignorance made them more deplorable.
However, this did not work for me. For example, bringing all religions together in the end of days group, but keeping out Hinduism as, as one man put it, ‘they worship cows’, seems indecent, and utterly unacceptable. Taunting any religion, belief, identity is never right, no matter what you are trying to achieve.
Read for my University Degree.
This seemed like the author was trying to rebuke racists, homophones, all religions, etc. by having her characters adamant they were not such people, or using satire or mocking to show they were, in fact, such people and their ignorance made them more deplorable.
However, this did not work for me. For example, bringing all religions together in the end of days group, but keeping out Hinduism as, as one man put it, ‘they worship cows’, seems indecent, and utterly unacceptable. Taunting any religion, belief, identity is never right, no matter what you are trying to achieve.
'We must have war or there would never be peace.'
'Human beings were impossible, she decided: they wrote the words, a great flood of words that was meant to explain and record the whole world, then they fought the wars that destroyed the lot.’
April 29, 2019
Couldn't even start reading the 3rd chapter... it might be a good book, but it is way too confusing and not compelling to continue reading... it goes straight to the public library, it might serve other readers.
January 16, 2020
Poorly characterised and plotted but also so much of this book is occupied with writing racist dialogue/throughout processes which is pretty weird for a white author. Stopped reading about halfway through because it wasn't worth it.
Read
September 9, 2013I got half way through this book which is the furthest I've ever got in a book that I wasn't enjoying. Indeed, I actually started this book three times because I couldn't remember who was who in the mass of characters. This time, when I made it half way through, I still couldn't. Nobody was particular meaningful or engaging and (unless I missed it when I started to skim read) there was little reference to what I had expected to be the main arc of the book (the post-apocalyptic politicking). If that picked up in the second half of the book, it was too late for me. An all-round disappointment, alas.
March 30, 2026
If you’re reading this review before reading Gee’s Flood, I recommend paying attention to the following: the social classes of the characters; the text’s attitude toward officials—academic and political in particular; biblical references; and gender-linked biases.
I also recommend keeping a running list of characters with brief descriptions. I was not very successful in getting such a list, even after hounding ChatGPT several times. It may, in fact, be a semi-futile endeavor, because the characters are grouped into stereotypical profiles: gender, class, age, and intellectual capacity.
When all hell breaks loose—and it does, several times, in different ways—it seems that what matters most is their position in society—certainly not their characters. Just as with pandemics, TSA shutdowns, and military drafts, the rich seem to get the better end of the deal every time. That said, the rich don’t seem particularly happy though.
But all is not bleak because the novel suggests, through Harold’s book and via the meteorologists’ studies, that life simply goes on. It is neither the future nor the past that we should worry about or pay attention to. It is simply the present, and this idea—that the present is universal for all of us—is a thread that pervades the book and offers its ultimate hope amid apocalypses.
The other hope offered is that the dead experience a greater understanding along a past-present-future continuum. This is not validated well in the novel, in my opinion.
There are also some huge stabs at religion, the religious, academics, and politics, which I found funny and poignant—but not particularly nuanced. There are a lot of digs at men, which I found rather nasty and small-minded. I was surprised that some of the characters I liked were the ones voicing them.
While I was looking for a moral compass in the story—among the narrator and the characters—I didn’t find one, likely, because the novel is not about ethics. Nor is it about logical consequences.
Rather, it seems to be about the ebb and flow of life’s joys and disasters—until death intercedes and affords us all a place of understanding.
Quotes:
Perhaps the dead can move through time if time is an endless unspooling ribbon, the living sea only the short bright section to which they cling, painting, struggling, peering out, blinded from the spotlit moment. Perhaps the dead see the whole of the road, stretching out forever, before, behind, 3000 human generations. Under the city, the dead travel onwards. Searching for something. Homing, homing. 6
May wasn't religious, but she knew there was something. There had to be; There was so much beauty. 10 her shyness, too, had quickly vanished as she learned to use the language of her lectures. Dolorice was afraid of nobody, now. Patricia forged onwards. “The Bottom line is, Emmer Dale makes a lot of money for us.” Sid, the sales manager, was frowning slightly. “Well, The figures for Lover in Clover weren't brilliant—” Patricia interrupted. “Thirty 1000 hardbacks of Farmyard Matters plus 300,000 paperbacks!” Dolorice tried again, more determinedly, “Look, it's hard to make sex in cancer boring, but this book does. Have you read a comma Patricia?” “Of course.” The older woman glared back. Dolorice knew at once that she hadn't. “Point is,” Brian said, rushing in to mollify anxious at the turn the conversation was taking, for people started asking if publishers read books, the game would be up for all of them.—“ Reckon we could shift half a mill of this one, if it's as raunchy as Farmyard Matters: “But,” Dolorice tried, one last time, “the public is going to see it's rubbish.” 29
“So what are you painting, can I just ask you?” “The end and the beginning of the world,” Ian said. 45
Then adolescence hit, with its souring knowledge. 47
Mysteriously, though, Gracie was home she couldn't bear her mother's carping, her predictable, puritanical opinions, her arguments with the television news—although Paula as a mother was faintly ridiculous, a potential source of public shame in tracksuit bottoms and turquoise anorak--mysteriously when Gracie was away from her, at times when she felt she was on the line, her mother's opinions leaped to her lips, her mother's worldview became her own. 47
Human beings were impossible, she decided: they wrote the words, a great flood of words that was meant to explain and record the whole world, then they fought the wars that destroyed the lot. Mind you, war was important period she wasn't against it. 54
The novelist’s flat was poor and small, allowing Moira to feel kindly towards her. 54
You tell me you haven't read Jude the Obscure, but how do I know you aren't unconsciously suppressing it? In any case, some texts are just in the air-to-put a lay-person’s gloss on it. 55
Once she had believed in all that. It was harder when you got rich and soft. (She wondered, briefly, if she still existed, somewhere, the sullen schoolgirl she had been?) 58
Though by now there was only a morsel or so left, Moira suddenly plunged on it like a Heron, stabbing the cube off Angela’s plate and snapping it down, her throat briefly bulging. This was something new in the scale of hostility. 59
By the time she finished Moira well shrieking, a long metal ribbon of screaming sound, one arm lifted to the fluorescent ceiling, the other gesturing toward the red window, and all the faces, the eager, the indolent, city worn faces, tired clever faces, innocent, Arden faces of the young, were fixed, startled, on the old woman prophesizing. 61
It wasn't really burgling, since it was for God. Father Bruno had explained all that. 65
And it wasn't perfect--dad could be a bastard, and look at mom now, so slight, so tiny, as if she only half exists, without him. 69
Mr bliss was banging the war drum Again. We must have war, or there will never be peace. 71
Although she was young, or because she was young, she understood dreams, and the pain of surrendering them, here in the city that gorged on dreams. 75
“It’s capitalism, isn't it? Exploiting nature. You're really lucky to deal with the stars,” she said. “I mean there isn't any capitalism, up there. There's nothing Helsperican [American?] up there. Just beauty, I guess.” 79
Lola is being, you know, a bit blaming. Teenagers are hot on blame. 81
Harold's physics allowed for no past or future, only a single infinite structure. A hall of time from which the moments open, a mansion of many sunlit rooms. Davey imagined an unending honeycomb. 83
One of the awful things about children was that they expected you to be consistent. 91
It’s about time, and simultaneity. The way everyone's moment happens at once, wherever they are, however different, and every atom is interconnected. 121
“No one ever dies,” said Harold, suddenly emptying another glass, and smiling transformed from the usual shy, ironic herald who led his wife take center stage. “In my book, I say no one ever dies. Good moments, like this one, go on forever. It's just that our bodies leave them behind. Our minds don't have to. We can choose to be happy.” 131
Lottie beamed upon him, proud but baffled. “That’s Awfully clever, Harold. But is it true?” “In my bucket is,” he smiled back at her. “The Eternal return, the eternal moment." 131
While May was alive, their old life would go on, his slippers in the cardboard, the daily paper. That way she would carry him onward. Alfred, love, I won't let go. 164
Life goes on, but now, beautiful; The swimming pool breathes in and out; The life it supports takes its rhythm for granted; Every day, peaceful, miraculous life in a city reclaimed from the edge of disaster. 198
They were a close family, full of passionate loyalty, but ravaged by the past, and the deeper past, by the shadows of the shadows of unspeakable crimes. 203
(But she has a slightly absent air, she is in a different world, a maternal worry.) 205
But every so often, the pattern fractures. Maybe the Galaxy is bored with balance. Maybe it gets tired of a life forms persistence period perhaps it wants to make room for something different comma something less myopic than the city-dwellers. 243
Yet all her kids had turned into believers. Shirley was always in church with the kids, Darren had his Marxism, which was like religion, because he held on to it no matter what, even though he was so wealthy, and never seemed to share it… 246
Yes, that was the word, “fundamentalist.” A word that had no light and shade. 247
Alfred believed in things like Justice, with a capital “J”, and Standards, with a capital “S”. May had more sense, because she was a woman… 247
She was over 70, yes, but she wasn't useless. She fell asleep with hope in her heart. 247
Religion, May thought. It could turn your brain. She imagined a giant lamb on a mountain, surrounded by the thousands of normal-sized people. You couldn't take it seriously, could you? Though she'd have to be careful not to laugh at Dirk. It wasn't a good idea to laugh at men. 248
The hissing whisper is “flood sickness”. No one is worried about astral bodies. On the long strings of space-time, events are gathering. 265
But now, slowly, under the surface, in the depths of their hearts where there is no argument, where knowledge never reaches, beyond logic, they start to hate, because they start to fear. 274
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn't know what to do. I didn't know anything. I never did.” It Was there again, that sinking feeling. Her whole life as a mother, her whole life as a wife, she had never known anything, she'd just reacted, just on the next thing is the next day came, and mostly it was wrong. Her whole hurrying life. It was only afterwards you understood things. 278
The rich believed they can always leave, that money will always get them away. 283
Frightening the people who do not leave. The poor believed they can never leave. There is no escape;
Life simply happens, the wheels roll forward, crushing them or sparing them. 284
Safe in the grass, the bodies lie, stunned by the arc of the sun through the sky. 304
Dreaming themselves, they are as they wish. All that they ever hoped to be. 304
I also recommend keeping a running list of characters with brief descriptions. I was not very successful in getting such a list, even after hounding ChatGPT several times. It may, in fact, be a semi-futile endeavor, because the characters are grouped into stereotypical profiles: gender, class, age, and intellectual capacity.
When all hell breaks loose—and it does, several times, in different ways—it seems that what matters most is their position in society—certainly not their characters. Just as with pandemics, TSA shutdowns, and military drafts, the rich seem to get the better end of the deal every time. That said, the rich don’t seem particularly happy though.
But all is not bleak because the novel suggests, through Harold’s book and via the meteorologists’ studies, that life simply goes on. It is neither the future nor the past that we should worry about or pay attention to. It is simply the present, and this idea—that the present is universal for all of us—is a thread that pervades the book and offers its ultimate hope amid apocalypses.
The other hope offered is that the dead experience a greater understanding along a past-present-future continuum. This is not validated well in the novel, in my opinion.
There are also some huge stabs at religion, the religious, academics, and politics, which I found funny and poignant—but not particularly nuanced. There are a lot of digs at men, which I found rather nasty and small-minded. I was surprised that some of the characters I liked were the ones voicing them.
While I was looking for a moral compass in the story—among the narrator and the characters—I didn’t find one, likely, because the novel is not about ethics. Nor is it about logical consequences.
Rather, it seems to be about the ebb and flow of life’s joys and disasters—until death intercedes and affords us all a place of understanding.
Quotes:
Perhaps the dead can move through time if time is an endless unspooling ribbon, the living sea only the short bright section to which they cling, painting, struggling, peering out, blinded from the spotlit moment. Perhaps the dead see the whole of the road, stretching out forever, before, behind, 3000 human generations. Under the city, the dead travel onwards. Searching for something. Homing, homing. 6
May wasn't religious, but she knew there was something. There had to be; There was so much beauty. 10 her shyness, too, had quickly vanished as she learned to use the language of her lectures. Dolorice was afraid of nobody, now. Patricia forged onwards. “The Bottom line is, Emmer Dale makes a lot of money for us.” Sid, the sales manager, was frowning slightly. “Well, The figures for Lover in Clover weren't brilliant—” Patricia interrupted. “Thirty 1000 hardbacks of Farmyard Matters plus 300,000 paperbacks!” Dolorice tried again, more determinedly, “Look, it's hard to make sex in cancer boring, but this book does. Have you read a comma Patricia?” “Of course.” The older woman glared back. Dolorice knew at once that she hadn't. “Point is,” Brian said, rushing in to mollify anxious at the turn the conversation was taking, for people started asking if publishers read books, the game would be up for all of them.—“ Reckon we could shift half a mill of this one, if it's as raunchy as Farmyard Matters: “But,” Dolorice tried, one last time, “the public is going to see it's rubbish.” 29
“So what are you painting, can I just ask you?” “The end and the beginning of the world,” Ian said. 45
Then adolescence hit, with its souring knowledge. 47
Mysteriously, though, Gracie was home she couldn't bear her mother's carping, her predictable, puritanical opinions, her arguments with the television news—although Paula as a mother was faintly ridiculous, a potential source of public shame in tracksuit bottoms and turquoise anorak--mysteriously when Gracie was away from her, at times when she felt she was on the line, her mother's opinions leaped to her lips, her mother's worldview became her own. 47
Human beings were impossible, she decided: they wrote the words, a great flood of words that was meant to explain and record the whole world, then they fought the wars that destroyed the lot. Mind you, war was important period she wasn't against it. 54
The novelist’s flat was poor and small, allowing Moira to feel kindly towards her. 54
You tell me you haven't read Jude the Obscure, but how do I know you aren't unconsciously suppressing it? In any case, some texts are just in the air-to-put a lay-person’s gloss on it. 55
Once she had believed in all that. It was harder when you got rich and soft. (She wondered, briefly, if she still existed, somewhere, the sullen schoolgirl she had been?) 58
Though by now there was only a morsel or so left, Moira suddenly plunged on it like a Heron, stabbing the cube off Angela’s plate and snapping it down, her throat briefly bulging. This was something new in the scale of hostility. 59
By the time she finished Moira well shrieking, a long metal ribbon of screaming sound, one arm lifted to the fluorescent ceiling, the other gesturing toward the red window, and all the faces, the eager, the indolent, city worn faces, tired clever faces, innocent, Arden faces of the young, were fixed, startled, on the old woman prophesizing. 61
It wasn't really burgling, since it was for God. Father Bruno had explained all that. 65
And it wasn't perfect--dad could be a bastard, and look at mom now, so slight, so tiny, as if she only half exists, without him. 69
Mr bliss was banging the war drum Again. We must have war, or there will never be peace. 71
Although she was young, or because she was young, she understood dreams, and the pain of surrendering them, here in the city that gorged on dreams. 75
“It’s capitalism, isn't it? Exploiting nature. You're really lucky to deal with the stars,” she said. “I mean there isn't any capitalism, up there. There's nothing Helsperican [American?] up there. Just beauty, I guess.” 79
Lola is being, you know, a bit blaming. Teenagers are hot on blame. 81
Harold's physics allowed for no past or future, only a single infinite structure. A hall of time from which the moments open, a mansion of many sunlit rooms. Davey imagined an unending honeycomb. 83
One of the awful things about children was that they expected you to be consistent. 91
It’s about time, and simultaneity. The way everyone's moment happens at once, wherever they are, however different, and every atom is interconnected. 121
“No one ever dies,” said Harold, suddenly emptying another glass, and smiling transformed from the usual shy, ironic herald who led his wife take center stage. “In my book, I say no one ever dies. Good moments, like this one, go on forever. It's just that our bodies leave them behind. Our minds don't have to. We can choose to be happy.” 131
Lottie beamed upon him, proud but baffled. “That’s Awfully clever, Harold. But is it true?” “In my bucket is,” he smiled back at her. “The Eternal return, the eternal moment." 131
While May was alive, their old life would go on, his slippers in the cardboard, the daily paper. That way she would carry him onward. Alfred, love, I won't let go. 164
Life goes on, but now, beautiful; The swimming pool breathes in and out; The life it supports takes its rhythm for granted; Every day, peaceful, miraculous life in a city reclaimed from the edge of disaster. 198
They were a close family, full of passionate loyalty, but ravaged by the past, and the deeper past, by the shadows of the shadows of unspeakable crimes. 203
(But she has a slightly absent air, she is in a different world, a maternal worry.) 205
But every so often, the pattern fractures. Maybe the Galaxy is bored with balance. Maybe it gets tired of a life forms persistence period perhaps it wants to make room for something different comma something less myopic than the city-dwellers. 243
Yet all her kids had turned into believers. Shirley was always in church with the kids, Darren had his Marxism, which was like religion, because he held on to it no matter what, even though he was so wealthy, and never seemed to share it… 246
Yes, that was the word, “fundamentalist.” A word that had no light and shade. 247
Alfred believed in things like Justice, with a capital “J”, and Standards, with a capital “S”. May had more sense, because she was a woman… 247
She was over 70, yes, but she wasn't useless. She fell asleep with hope in her heart. 247
Religion, May thought. It could turn your brain. She imagined a giant lamb on a mountain, surrounded by the thousands of normal-sized people. You couldn't take it seriously, could you? Though she'd have to be careful not to laugh at Dirk. It wasn't a good idea to laugh at men. 248
The hissing whisper is “flood sickness”. No one is worried about astral bodies. On the long strings of space-time, events are gathering. 265
But now, slowly, under the surface, in the depths of their hearts where there is no argument, where knowledge never reaches, beyond logic, they start to hate, because they start to fear. 274
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn't know what to do. I didn't know anything. I never did.” It Was there again, that sinking feeling. Her whole life as a mother, her whole life as a wife, she had never known anything, she'd just reacted, just on the next thing is the next day came, and mostly it was wrong. Her whole hurrying life. It was only afterwards you understood things. 278
The rich believed they can always leave, that money will always get them away. 283
Frightening the people who do not leave. The poor believed they can never leave. There is no escape;
Life simply happens, the wheels roll forward, crushing them or sparing them. 284
Safe in the grass, the bodies lie, stunned by the arc of the sun through the sky. 304
Dreaming themselves, they are as they wish. All that they ever hoped to be. 304
June 6, 2024
An interesting novel. I think the reviewers who criticise might not have read further on where I think the novel really comes into its own. About 1/3 in I became absolutely gripped. Reading it now, 20 years after publication, it's as a climate change novel that this novel is strongest. The use of biblical imagery is great. And I became attached to some of the characters. I thought the writing of the interactions between children was brilliant, the writer clearly has a good understanding of children.
The novel is set in a kind of parallel-universe London, one in which the culture of the country has developed slightly differently, and one in which apocalyptic climate change is so advanced that London is sinking into a flood. This should have been on the blurb as it would establish more clearly from the outset the context for some of the writing about race and other aspects of the novel. One of the best aspects of the novel is the way the social and economic fabric is crumbling in the face of overwhelming flooding, but also the way that ordinary life goes on, or tries to.
What comes across is that the novel may not have been as edited as it perhaps needed. I don't quite get the use of racism in the novel, even though it's clearly intended as a comment on the white characters. It could be cut back and refined, and it doesn't make sense to have it concentrated at the start of the novel rather than at the end. The attempt to write accents is uncomfortable for a modern reader, even though this book was written in the early 2000s. I also found the writing about the Muslim couple very clunky.
The novel is set in a kind of parallel-universe London, one in which the culture of the country has developed slightly differently, and one in which apocalyptic climate change is so advanced that London is sinking into a flood. This should have been on the blurb as it would establish more clearly from the outset the context for some of the writing about race and other aspects of the novel. One of the best aspects of the novel is the way the social and economic fabric is crumbling in the face of overwhelming flooding, but also the way that ordinary life goes on, or tries to.
What comes across is that the novel may not have been as edited as it perhaps needed. I don't quite get the use of racism in the novel, even though it's clearly intended as a comment on the white characters. It could be cut back and refined, and it doesn't make sense to have it concentrated at the start of the novel rather than at the end. The attempt to write accents is uncomfortable for a modern reader, even though this book was written in the early 2000s. I also found the writing about the Muslim couple very clunky.
May 12, 2023
Having read a somewhat insane number of dystopian novels for my English Lit A-Level, I like to think that it would take quite something for a work of this genre to surprise me. The Flood didn't even come close.
My biggest issue when reading this book was the huge cast of characters. It was almost impossible to keep track of them all, especially as Gee's prose switched frequently and unexpectedly from one scene to the next. As a result, I was still unsure who some of the characters were in the climax!
The jacket bills the book as 'very funny' but I didn't laugh once. I thought the characters were stereotyped so much they felt flat and corny, and the societal criticism lacked subtlety.
Books that execute similar concepts in a far superior way include Sea of Tranquility, The Wall, and Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy (which I can't seem to stop recommending!).
My biggest issue when reading this book was the huge cast of characters. It was almost impossible to keep track of them all, especially as Gee's prose switched frequently and unexpectedly from one scene to the next. As a result, I was still unsure who some of the characters were in the climax!
The jacket bills the book as 'very funny' but I didn't laugh once. I thought the characters were stereotyped so much they felt flat and corny, and the societal criticism lacked subtlety.
Books that execute similar concepts in a far superior way include Sea of Tranquility, The Wall, and Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy (which I can't seem to stop recommending!).
September 21, 2020
It’s the same millennium but place names have changed. America becomes Hesperica and the city where the novel is set (with its opera houses and publishing houses, tower blocks and slums), although not named feels like London.
The divide between rich and poor is as shocking as it is in reality. But the floods, in the end, do not distinguish between the haves and have-nots, they will all be sucked into the inevitable tsunami.
This is spectacularly written, startling imagery which highlights everything that is hideous and glorious about humanity and the natural world.
The novel is packed with characters which can seem a little overwhelming; the reward of investing time and patience getting to know each will reveal itself in the stunning finale; (the ending would have not been so powerful if the book was thinly populated).
The divide between rich and poor is as shocking as it is in reality. But the floods, in the end, do not distinguish between the haves and have-nots, they will all be sucked into the inevitable tsunami.
This is spectacularly written, startling imagery which highlights everything that is hideous and glorious about humanity and the natural world.
The novel is packed with characters which can seem a little overwhelming; the reward of investing time and patience getting to know each will reveal itself in the stunning finale; (the ending would have not been so powerful if the book was thinly populated).
September 24, 2018
I liked the intelligence and the understated wit with which this was written, but am at a loss to understand why it wasn't just set in the real world. I recognised characters from Maggie Gee's previous novel "The White Family", and as far as I can remember that was set in the "real" world, so was baffled by that. I was expecting some kid of apocalypse novel based on the synopsis, but that element of it didn't really deliver. Best to appreciate this as a series of loosely connected vignettes with some well drawn characters. My favourite bit was the satirical depiction of the teenagers - as a parent of teenagers perhaps that's not surprising.
November 25, 2024
- [x] Gee - il Diluvio - 7 - affascinante romanzo purtroppo senza capo ne coda. Futuro prossimo venturo, o presente alternativo, si vive sotto un diluvio perenne, che unitamente alle scelte scellerate dei governanti provocano inondazioni senza controllo (essendo il romanzo di 20 anni fa, autrice come cassandra). Si vive nella paura di guerre minacciate e reali, qualcuno nella povertà, qualcuno nell’agio, si teme l’apocalisse come una pandemia. Alla fine succede quanto promesso, atteso dalla moltitudine di protagonisti di questo romanzo forse troppo corale, e forse il finale non è proprio soddisfacente. Ma il senso di precarietà di questo mondo è ben reso. Umido
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 6, 2023
DNF. This one has been on my bookshelf for years after I read The Ice People, which I really enjoyed. I don't really like inner monologues, especially of characters I'm not invested in, and who are fanatical. The flood wasn't what I thought it was going to be and I was constantly trying to work out if it was emergency scale or not. Everyone just seemed to be getting on with it rather than modifying their behaviour and the government was not as visible as it was during the pandemic, so I found it hard to buy into.
October 7, 2017
While this could have been interesting, there were just two many characters without a great deal of characterisation. I felt it skimmed through peoples lives without telling much story or revealing and real character. Some of the humour in this is very perceptive and funny, but not enough really for this to be worth reading.
July 3, 2021
I really enjoyed this. I enjoyed the style of writing and the constant underlying sense of damp, cold, and uncomfortableness.
It took me a bit to recall each characters situations. I liked how the stories weaved around each other. I feel the author managed to express the differences between the various groups, people, and circumstances very well.
It took me a bit to recall each characters situations. I liked how the stories weaved around each other. I feel the author managed to express the differences between the various groups, people, and circumstances very well.
July 6, 2025
I think the only thing I appreciate in this book is that everyone dies in the end. I’ve never read anything where every character is insufferable. Truly one of a kind. I wish I was joking when I say this took me two year to read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 20, 2017
This was superb. I LOVED it. I loved the detail, the fully-fleshed-out multi character story structure, the way it built to an incredibly epic climax that was, truly, sublime.
November 28, 2018
Very convoluted plot & so many characters to remember, but stuck with it. The jury’s put on this one!
January 14, 2020
Bought in error after thinking this was by a different author. A political and challenging read with many characters and some thought-provoking, bleak subject matter. Cleverly written and original.
May 9, 2021
Beautifully written, big ideas and a mesmerising setting, however I struggled with the book. None of the characters were likeable, but perhaps that is the point? We are all redeemable?
January 20, 2024
Difficile da giudicare, perché estremamente eterogeneo. A tratti interessante, arguto e coinvolgente, ma spesso faticoso da leggere probabilmente anche a causa di una
traduzione di qualità modesta.
traduzione di qualità modesta.
May 2, 2025
Not sure why I read this: I don’t normally read or enjoy sci-fi/apocalyptic novels. I appreciated the social commentary and the writing style, but after a while I was bored of the premise.
October 15, 2020
While I believe the characters remain horrible throughout the whole book and I struggled with the homophobia and racism in the beginning of the book, I must say I came to enjoy reading it. Not because any of the problems mentioned got better. I must admit I can't fully put my finger on it, but I guess it's because I found it interesting to read about all those horrible people and watch them slowly but surely be claimed by the flood of their own consumerism and superficiality. I also came to like the way the book is written, as it took me out of my comfort zone. The book generally took me out of my comfort zone and I appreciate that.
June 3, 2008
I recall that I read 'The White Family' by Gee when it was nominated for the Orange Prize and quite liked it.
This novel has some of the characters from that in it, along with some from another Gee novel - it seems once she has invented a character she likes to get her moneys worth! But otherwise its a wholly different kind of novel.
A dystopian world where everythings gone a bit wrong with politics, people and mostly the weather. And other that that it lost me a bit.
I couldn't connect with the characters and the whole thing felt a bit sterile and distanced. Only in the final chapters did I feel like I cared what happened to them, and then only a little.
Sometimes books just don't work for certain readers and this was one of those!
This novel has some of the characters from that in it, along with some from another Gee novel - it seems once she has invented a character she likes to get her moneys worth! But otherwise its a wholly different kind of novel.
A dystopian world where everythings gone a bit wrong with politics, people and mostly the weather. And other that that it lost me a bit.
I couldn't connect with the characters and the whole thing felt a bit sterile and distanced. Only in the final chapters did I feel like I cared what happened to them, and then only a little.
Sometimes books just don't work for certain readers and this was one of those!
September 6, 2015
The number of characters and their connections was a little overwhelming but I enjoyed how their stories intertwined. This isn't a straightforward read and is more about moments and connections rather than the apocalypse itself. I got this book because I really enjoyed The Ice People by Maggie Gee. I didn't enjoy The Flood as much. I think there were too many characters: I didn't feel invested in any of them.
This isn't a typical apocalyptic novel. I got the impression that I was missing out on something the whole way through. Maybe that's the effect the author was intending.
This isn't a typical apocalyptic novel. I got the impression that I was missing out on something the whole way through. Maybe that's the effect the author was intending.
December 22, 2015
The reviews on here tend find this confused and overwhelming. Whilst it's easy to agree, reading this at a time when Cumbria is flooded and the UK are dropping bombs on Syria makes it feel eerily prescient about the things in contemporary society that are different but, somehow, always the same. Dishearteningly relevant.
March 10, 2023
Don’t read if you contemplate existence or worry about that sort of thing, it will play on your mind. This is probably a fantastic read for someone who enjoys thinking about these things but unfortunately I am not among them.
The characters were at times good and the plot the same, but for the most part, the book really played on the apocalyptic style I find difficult to read.
The characters were at times good and the plot the same, but for the most part, the book really played on the apocalyptic style I find difficult to read.
January 7, 2016
Having discovered this British novelist I am keen to read more. Her ideas are original, she is a keen observer of societal mores and she has a great affection for her characters – even the unlovable ones.
Want to Read
July 29, 201104 long list-orange prize
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