The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2)

by Margaret Atwood

Vultures are our friends, the Gardeners used to teach. They purify the earth. They are God’s necessary dark Angels of bodily dissolution. Imagine how terrible it would be if there were no death! Do I still believe this? Toby wonders. Everything is different up close.

time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it’s a sea on which you float.