Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood | I'll never forget this book

Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood | Brilliant

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Oryx and Crake

	Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood, 2003 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 306 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize

Margaret Atwood?s new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it.

This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For readers of Oryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again.

The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief.

With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers.

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I'll never forget this book

The future described in this book chilled me to the core; I actually found it even more thought-provoking than the dystopian vision of The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood's story touches on many contemporary issues: environmental destruction, extinction, megalomania, genetic experiments gone awry, deceptive advertising and the numbing of the masses, and out-of-control political power. Her social commentary is expertly woven into the story, never preachy.

She writes with such attention to detail and consistency that her brave new world seems real, not imagined. After finishing Oryx and Crake, I felt a profound sadness for humankind, as well as a greater appreciation for everything lost in Atwood's cautionary tale: art, love, food, humor, and free will.

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Brilliant

How could I have missed this masterpiece for so long ? . Ranks with 1984 and Brave New World but told in a simpler prose. Atwood hooks the reader with the enigma of Snowman's current predicament while interweaving
her vision of a dystopian future. Some may not agree with her general thesis but she tells a compelling tale.

seems prophetic

This book reminds me of A Brave New World. It's a fast-paced, believable look into the not-too-distant future. In Atwood's America, we've become narcissists who attempt to quicken our deadened souls with cyber-porn, voyeuristic violence, mood altering drugs, and relentless combat against aging and death. It would seem that mankind in Oryx and Crake has forgotten -- or rejected -- that it was made in the image of God. The book was not at all farfetched, given the slippery slope our narcissistic Facebook generation is heading down with genetic research/manipulation, abortion on demand, legalized suicide, and rampant sexual desensitization through all manner of internet pornography. The book accurately diagnoses the very-real problem but, alas, doesn't hint at a solution, which I would have liked to have seen. All in all, though, it was an engaging, memorable, and thought-provoking read.

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"Bogus!"

Interesting trip through one man's misery and guilt. Snowman may be the last human on Earth. He's haunted by his memories of Oryx and Crake, his lover and friend from before the apocalypse. Together the three are responsible for triggering the end of humanity and Snowman is left to pick up the pieces.

The book clocks in around 350 pages but felt much shorter, due to the accessible prose. The only flaw is the lightning quick shifts from the present to flashback and back-the problem being that as soon as I begin to feel comfortable Atwood switches gears yet again, creating a slightly jarring effect. This, however, is a minor problem considering the story as a whole. I could not put this down!

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Interesting take on a common theme

I really enjoyed this book and the way it was written was slightly different from the usual apocalyptic novel. It starts with the world already at an end and through Snowman's memories and thoughts we are taken through his life and ultimatly how man's destruction came about while also following Snowman's current fight for survival.

Some people have claimed the ending is poor. I disagree I think it is fairly obvious what is going to happen, even if it is not explicitly written out, but I can't go into more detail without giving away the end. Suffice to say it doesn't explain how the world will continue but then it would take a whole other book to do that.

I have taken off one star because they was a couple of points that I felt should have/could have been better explained. Again, unlike others I feel Crake's motivation is fairly obvious but I was not so sure what (or why) his intentions were towards himself and Jimmy in his last scene. Why was Jimmy brought to work at Reejov? I also was waiting on an explanation about Orynx that never came. Was she real? Were her memories real or was she an early creation of Crake's who had implanted these memories based on his and Jimmy's internet encouters. I also felt a chance was missed to explore the pleeblands in more detail either through Jimmy making more excursions there or through his mother. This may have given another element to the story.

However despite these minor quips I enjoyed the book and although Jimmy/Snowman is a fairly despondant and morose individual (maybe understandable) I really wanted to know what would happen next.

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