Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood | seems prophetic

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Oryx and Crake

	Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood Anchor, 2004 - 376 pages average customer review:based on 308 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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 novel about the future of humanity?and its present.

Humanity here equals Snowman, and in Snowman?s recollections Atwood re-creates a time much like our own, when a boy named Jimmy loved an elusive, damaged girl called Oryx and a sardonic genius called Crake. But now Snowman is alone, and as we learn why we also learn about a world that could become ours one day.

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.

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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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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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