Oryx and Crake (The MaddAddam Trilogy)

By Margaret Atwood

Book Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The first volume in the internationally acclaimed MaddAddam trilogy is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future--from the bestselling author of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385721676
• ISBN13: 9780385721677
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 389 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.9" x 0.8" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

A great read with awesome world building and thought provoking themes.

This was a thought-provoking read, and honestly, it feels more relevant now than ever. The book explores a world where corporations run everything, and the best inventions are reserved for them while the rest of us are left with products that promise health and eternal youth but are mostly scams. It also explores genetic modifications, playing God with science, and how the elite in this world use these scientific advances to grow their pockets while ignoring the consequences for everyone else. Just to clarify, this is not a romance novel, despite what some places label it as. There’s an element of “love” in the story, but it’s not a typical romance—it’s more about obsession, memory, and loneliness than love itself. The book’s real focus is on human hubris, environmental collapse, and the ethics of unchecked scientific advancement, all told through the eyes of Snowman, who is possibly the last human alive, reflecting on how the world ended up this way. It’s about what happens when knowledge and power are wielded without accountability and when people become so numb to their own destruction that they barely notice it happening. I loved the world-building. Atwood does an excellent job painting a vivid, unsettling future that feels both strange and familiar, from the gated corporate compounds to the genetically engineered animals that roam the ruins. The story is intriguing right from the beginning, though it does lag in parts. It’s almost a slow burn, with intense, thought-provoking moments scattered throughout, and then the ending comes quickly—almost anti-climactic. I saw where it was going, but I didn’t expect it to happen so fast. Still, it was a good read. I enjoyed it enough to immediately order the next two books in the series, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the story continues.

Unnecessary, confusing flow, unsatisfactory

I really really didn’t enjoy this one. I kept hoping it would get better, but I honestly question the idea of what is romantic here. The ending wasn’t good either. So far I haven’t enjoyed anything by this author, personally.

Awesome

Apocalyptic eloquence.

I can't say I enjoyed this story, since so much of it was brutal and ugly, but I did enjoy many parts of it along the way. It raises a legitimate question: Who is in charge of the whole of human culture? Can anybody control the march of history? Crake believes our destruction is written in our genes, and we were doomed the day we invented art. The global economy must inevitably collapse, and this story pulls the Band-Aid off relatively quickly. Snowman, the narrator, watches more than six billion people die overnight. Afterward, he has plenty of time to think about how little he knew about everyone in his life: his mother, his father, his best friend Crake, and his lover Oryx all turned out to be relative strangers, with secret histories and hidden motives. If educated, healthy people can't manage basic relationships, it comes as no surprise that the administration of a global economy is beyond anyone's control. On the road to hell, or the road through hell, Snowman invents words and plays with language. He finds plenty of material to illustrate the flaws of humans. Still, as flawed as humans were, the humanoid species selected to replace Homo sapiens is engineered to perfection and mind-numbingly dull. Snowman's knowledge prevents him from entering their innocent culture, and all his memories and cleverness are wasted without anyone to talk to. I didn't necessarily like Snowman, or Crake or Oryx, or anyone in the entire book, but I'm glad I met them, and I won't soon forget them.

"The elimination of one generation means game over forever."

Set sometime in the future, this post-apocalyptic novel takes scientific research in the hands of madmen to its logical and frightening conclusion. Inspiring readers to pay more attention to the world around them, Atwood offers cautionary notes about the environment, bioengineering, the sacrifice of civil liberties, and the possible loss of those human values which make life more than just a physical experience. As the novel opens, some catastrophe has occurred, effectively wiping out all human life. Snowman (known as Jimmy in his youth) is the lone survivor, a man on the verge of starvation in this desolate new world, now living in a tree for protection against "wolvogs" (part dog, part wolf) and serving as the protector of a bioengineered strain of humanoid children. As Atwood alternates between the unexplained disaster in which Snowman finds himself at the outset of the novel and flashbacks to his youth and early adulthood, which he shared with his best friend Crake, she brings a dismal future-world to life. Not surprisingly, Oryx, Snowman's love, has been involved in the devastation, as has Crake, though Atwood saves till the conclusion an explanation of the catastrophe, something which may frustrate some readers. Because we never see Jimmy/Snowman engaging in the kind of personal conflict which would have led to such a grand-scale disaster, we never really experience the intense reader involvement which might have developed from observing such a conflict. Most of the real conflict, in fact, takes place in the past and is revealed only in flashbacks. Snowman's primary conflict is his final, lonely battle with the environment to stay alive, something which advances the message at the expense of dramatic tension. Characters also are subordinated to message. We know only as much about Jimmy/Snowman as we need to know in order to empathize with him in his predicament as possibly the last man on earth. Crake is an anti-hero, remote and distanced, and Oryx remains a mystery. Despite its grim subject and cautionary message, the novel has a great deal of humor. With trenchant satire, Atwood pokes fun at aspects of our contemporary lives carried to extremes. Not hard science fiction, the novel is a vividly described picture of science and scientists run amok in a society which has failed in its guardianship of the environment and of life itself. More light-hearted than terrifying, and more allegorical than heart-stopping, the novel carries an environmental message of great relevance. Mary Whipple

A dark, fascinating novel

It's been a long time since I've read a book that was difficult to put down -- but Oryx and Crake kept me intrigued till the end. In terms of energy, it's better than The Blind Assassin, but it's too dark to be my favourite Atwood novel. Atwood paints a scary picture of a future with company compounds, killer viruses, gene splicing, volatile weather, and scarce commodities. It should make us think twice about experiments in genetics and the large investments in biomedical firms some companies are making. Atwood's invention rings true -- I especially think the games Jimmy and Crake play as 14-year-olds (including Extinctathon) are clever. However, many of references in the games and the novel hark back to the 20th Century--good for the reader to relate to, but not completely realistic. In that sense, the novel is not as successful as say, Neuromancer, in which you are completely immersed in that time and place. Some of the reviewers here see Jimmy as a static character and an average Joe. I very much disagree. He is far from average -- he's brilliant with words. However, his talent is not valued by the biomedical society of the future. He's a person with good instincts (he doesn't want to betray his mother, though he's angry at her; he questions the intentions and experiments of the brilliant Crake) trying to cope in a world where an immoral corporate elite is in control. His character growth may not be so obvious because of the structure of the novel--we are in the present and viewing the past from that vantage point.Crake is also in intriguing character. I thought at one point he might be working with Jimmy's mother to try to save the world. But he becomes evil, distributing the virus that kills off most of the world's population. Did he send Oryx to Jimmy to deliberately create the love triangle that resulted in his death? Did the planning for that begin years before Paradice? Why did he select Jimmy--the word person--as the Crakers' caretaker? These are all questions I'd like to ask Atwood.All in all, this novel is excellently written and thought-provoking. I highly recommend it.

One of the year's best novels for 2003

ORYX AND CRAKE by Margaret AtwoodShortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003, ORYX AND CRAKE is Margaret Atwood's most apocalyptic story to date. For those of you who have read THE HANDMAID'S TALE, ORYX AND CRAKE is a lot more grim and depressing, in terms of the plight of the human race. It may be a challenge for some to get through this book. Those who are fans of Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction, however, may embrace this novel as I did. It is probably one of the best novels written by Margaret Atwood.There are two main themes in ORYX AND CRAKE. First, the novel takes place in the distant future, where global warming has changed the earth so much that the coastal cities no longer exist, and New York is now New New York. Going outside in the sun is a death sentence, so the wealthier areas of the world are protected under places known as compounds, although areas known as The Pleebands still exist, where people live and are still exposed to nature in all its glory. The second major plot line has to do with three central characters. Snowman is the narrator, also known as Jimmy, who at the start of the book is the only known surviving human being on the face of the planet. The book starts off with Snowman sleeping in a tree, barely alive, knowing that he does not have too much longer to live. Food is scarce, the sun is so hot he has blisters all over his body, and the genetically engineered creatures the wolvogs and the pigoons that have escaped are now roaming the grounds. While he tries to keep alive, Snowman also keeps watch over a group of humanoid creatures called the Crakers, named after his "best" friend Crake, who was somehow responsible over the creation of these people. These Crakers are supposedly the ideal humans. They have no emotional desires, in particular no sex drives, except to pro-create. There is no reason for war, with this new type of human being. They are vegetarians, and do not desire meat. They are very simple people, and Snowman had promised to care for them if anything happened to Crake.As Snowman goes back in time to reflect on the past, we learn more about Crake, who was an egotistical brilliant young man who had visions of a so-called better world. The third main character is Oryx, a woman whose history takes the reader to a third world Asian country where she was sold into a type of servitude, and eventually becomes a prostitute. She then finds her way to the western world and ends up working with Crake, becoming part of his plan when he creates the Crakers. Their story is revealed in pieces, told while Snowman goes on an adventure to find food and seek out the compound where it had all began. Snowman wants to go back to this place, hoping to find answers and food and supplies, and to remember the reasons why the human race was nearly obliterated. It's the story of these three and their lopsided relationship that leads us to answers of why the world "ended". The new concepts and horrors that are being

Jack and Jill it is Not

Keep reading - this is not your usual Margaret Atwood story line, or is it? A brilliant and illuminating novel about a possible future for a world that has come to worship at the altar of technology. The story has considerable tension in it to keep the reader glued to the book to see what comes next. Above all, this is a book about "words" and the beauty of language lost. Atwood flavors her grim vision of the future with the spices of words no longer in the vernacular, creating an intense paella that is immensly satisfying and yet somehow shot through with loss. Atwood exhibits her marvelous sense of story and language in this book, leaving the reader running for a dictionary of ancient words to reintroduce them to everday talk. Words, lost or unrecorded, die a death, unmourned.