Pros: sympathetic narrator; intriguing set-up and smooth narrative keep you reading to the very end
Cons: frustrating--takes the entire book to deliver the answers you wanted from the very beginning
The Bottom Line: A cautionary tale of what's in store if we allow our hopes and fears to be exploited and if scientific progress is entrusted to flawed and corrupt geniuses.
jc_hall's Full Review: Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake: A Novel
Much of science fiction deals with dystopia, some of which verge on the apocalyptic. It is not a side of science fiction that particularly appeals to me, as I find the premise depressing and often too far-fetched for me to suspend disbelief. However, Margaret Atwood has created a hauntingly real world in Oryx and Crake, one that is extrapolated rather ruthlessly from our own. And while some aspects may be shocking, they have the ring of ‘possible’ to them, even when they become frighteningly macabre.
Throughout the novel, Atwood injects a wry, black, humour that works very well despite its context. I should say now that I had to struggle to get through The Handmaid’s Tale, but found Oryx and Crake a breeze, despite the initial frustration. Though both novels are about dystopic societies, the style she employed for the two differs tremendously. So if anyone has had a problem with Handmaid, there’s no reason not to give Oryx and Crake a chance.
At the very beginning of the novel, we meet the self-named Snowman, close to starving and seemingly alone in a danger-filled world but for a group of Crakers—strangely perfect-looking humans with some quite non-human characteristics.
Unlike the Crakers who can survive on grass and the odd berry, Snowman must go scavenging or die of starvation. He prepares for a journey to a Compound where he hopes to find food and also weapons necessary to protect himself from strange animals (often a mix of two known species, e.g. the snake-and-rat ‘snat’, the wolf-and-dog ‘wolvog’) that are roaming wild.
As we follow Snowman on his journey to the Compound, we likewise follow him on a twin journey back to his past. Atwood skilfully unfolds the story of Snowman’s life in a series of flashbacks, a literary device that could be awkward, but in this case proves seamless and always involving. Which is just as well, because this backstory is basically the explanation for what has led to the status quo.
We see Snowman as he was when he was still Jimmy, his childhood overtly privileged, with parents who worked high-level in the bio-science community of the Compound, but actually neglected and unloved. Atwood does a great job showing his conflicted emotions regarding his mother, culminating in a powerfully moving scene where he puts on her robe after she abandoned him. We’re there when he meets Crake who becomes his one and only best friend and who is to have such an impact on his life. We watch these boys grow from adolescents to young adulthood, going their separate ways when they graduate from high school, Crake (the ‘numbers’ genius) to the crème de la crème university for bioscience jocks and Jimmy (the ‘words’ guy) to an obscure arts college.
It is when Crake seeks out Jimmy years later when they are working for different organizations, and Jimmy agrees to go work with Crake, that we begin to have an inkling of what Crake has been working on.
Jimmy and Crake have always lived in Compounds, elite gated communities a world apart from the Pleeb-lands where the commoners get by as best they can in some sort of anarchic society. As Crake’s intelligence and detachment elevate him above everyone else, he is seduced by his own genius into experiments with dubious ethical overtones. By this time, he has developed something like a God-complex.
Meanwhile, Jimmy is struggling with his feelings for Oryx, the woman with whom Crake has fallen in love, the woman whom Jimmy has desired for years. From Oryx, Jimmy comes to realize the extent of Crake’s experiments.
Margaret Atwood has created an utterly believable dystopic world where people’s desire for perpetual youth and even immortality is knowingly and shockingly exploited by those in a position to profit from it. These unscrupulous and unethical individuals—a whole legion of them, scientists and businessmen alike—exploit the hopes and fears of their fellow human beings, out of greed, and with absolutely no sense of compassion or even a modicum of guilt.
It is a testament to Atwood’s power as a novelist that she is able to wrest from the reader, amidst an inevitable sense of dismay and disillusionment, not only a feeling of general outrage at the human condition that she so neatly portrays, but also a specific emotional response to Snowman’s plight. Not that he might well be the only real human being left in the aftermath of apocalypse, dire though that might be, but that not even the end of the world as he knows it could overshadow the depth of heartache he experiences at the loss of the one woman he loved and the best friend he ever had. Perhaps that, in sum, is what makes us human—the ability to feel for another person with such simple, unarguable, passion. The simple ability to love.
The ending is open, and Snowman’s future, like mankind’s, could go one way or the other. There is the path of hope and there is the one to destruction. Perhaps that is the essence of the author’s cautionary message. We’re poised on the cusp of great change. For better or for worse. Here be dragons. We have been warned.
General Fiction - A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The Blind Assassin , winner of the Booker Prize Mar...More at Barnes and Noble
With the same stunning blend of prophecy and social satire she brought to her classic The Handmaid s Tale, Margaret Atwood gives us a keenly prescient...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.