Rating: 
Summary: Not my cup of tea
Review: The plot is to filled with hopeless lose ideals. The book is well written and I did not have trouble keeping interested. However, when finished the soul has empty not filled.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely Read this Book
Review: Oryx and Crake is an extremely well written book. With a complex story and fast paced writing, Atwood brilliantly spins a cautionary tale, and the book is so engrossing I couldn't put it down until I finished reading it. My favorite books are futuristic ones like George Orwell's masterpiece 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which live on as eerie warnings to mankind. I also love good science fiction stories, like Robert Heinlen's Stranger in a Strange Land, which paints a picture of an interesting futuristic world filled with man's upcoming inventions. In Oryx and Crake, Atwood seamlessly combines the best of both genres. Atwood sets the story in a bleak world, the remnants of future human society, and like many futuristic writers, she raises relevant questions about our society and points to the inevitable downfall at the end of our current path. Atwood fills the world with great scientific gadgets, creatures, and inventions as well. This would be more than enough for a great novel, but Atwood also adds her own brilliant poetic writing, haunting words that ring true. At first, it's not clear what the story is about. Reading it is like a puzzle; you are only given a piece at a time. The story starts with Snowman, sitting in a tree, starving to death, pondering his fate. As Snowman remembers his childhood, growing up, Crake, Oryx, and the downfall of mankind, readers learn bit by bit what happened that's forced him alone into a tree. Unlike many other reviewers who frown upon him, I really like the book's protagonist Snowman, formerly known as Jimmy. He is necessary because he is the only main character that really shows emotion, and a reader needs an emotional character, one he or she can relate to throughout the story. Jimmy is a "normal" man; he is not the brightest, often lazy, and the only thing he truly enjoys is sex. He's average, and even in his futuristic compound setting, he shares many of our life experiences. The other two characters - Oryx and Crake - are both captivating and quite interesting, but readers are not as similar to them and thus don't relate to them as quickly. Jimmy's busy with girlfriends, while his best friend Crake studies science at a genius' level. Crake is the top of their class and goes to the top college. It is what Harvard was before the flood that wiped out Boston, along with New York (now there's New New York). It is unnecessary details like these about the future of our world that truly make the novel as great as it is. When they go to college, the boys leave the Compound - one of several large, all inclusive gated communities. The Compounds make genetically advanced products to sell to the urban populations of the chaotic "pleeblands." One cannot leave the Compound without permission, and the colleges are strictly guarded as well (Crake's college is guarded much more than Jimmy's second rate one). The other eponymous character - Oryx - is very different from the boys. Sold from her Asian parents to sell flowers in the city, she is eventually resold to be in pedophilic pornographic films on a website. Jimmy and Crake see her first through the website, and eventually, they find her and each fall in love. Jimmy, with his rash emotions, cannot understand why Oryx isn't mad at the world. She figures she wouldn't have ended up with them if things hadn't happened that way and that the men could have treated her much worse. Jimmy is frustrated with these answers, and like the readers, wants Oryx to be mad at her parents for selling her and at the men who forced her to have sex at a young age. Snowman is alone as he narrates the tale, flashing back to the other characters. His world is broken. There are no people; Oryx and Crake are gone, which is even creepier because their names are those of extinct animals. (This came from the computer game Extinctathon, where all players must use the name of an extinct animal.) Abominable Snowman, Oryx, Crake...it makes you wonder if man is next on the list. With Oryx and Crake gone, is Snowman the last man alive, slowly melting away? Something terrible happened, practically wiping out humanity, but what? These questions will haunt you as you read this book, gluing your eyes to the page until the very end. The other major mystery is the children of Crake, left to Snowman's care. He lives with a group of genetically engineered docile humanoids, made by Crake. They are all different colors and have the names of great people of human history. The Crakers all have luminescent green eyes and smell like fruit. They eat plants and have strange features stolen from adaptations of various organisms. Snowman tells them fictional stories about their creator, as they go about their boring lives. Snowman is withering away, barely eating and trying to survive against freaky genetically engineered predators that escaped from laboratories during the end of civilization. He must go back to the Compounds for supplies, or surely he will die. The story is extremely compelling, forcing readers to read hundreds of pages at a time. The language is beautifully constructed, and Atwood pokes fun at our doomed society with a wry humor that's brilliant at times. Her imagination runs wild as this new society is built and destroyed before the reader's attentive eyes, leaving us to ponder its meaning along with our own. Read this book; it is a masterpiece.
Rating: 
Summary: unsatisfying
Review: I have read all of Margaret Atwood's novels and I was really excited about reading her latest. I was seriously disappointed. It seemed she's attempting to delve into territory where she simply doesn't belong - and why? There are already so many airport-grade novelists out there tackling this sci-fi-horror genre, and she isn't even adding anything new to the mix. A future with transgenic animals that become pests? So what? A self-righteous genius who creates a race of super-humans? Who cares? It's all been done before, by people who actually manage to sound like they know what they're talking about.
Jimmy was so dull and his actions continually unexplained. Why was he living in a tree if there was a whole planet full of vacant cities? Why was he starving if it had only been a few months since the plague?
Crake's final actions were completely unexplained. Why would he leave a halfwit like Jimmy in charge? And what was the point of Oryx?
Why did the story end where it did? It's like she explained the setting and the events that led to the current scenario, and then never got around to actually telling a story. She even managed to make the super-humans boring.
Her attempt at writing from the perspective of a male seemed unsuccessful (then again I'm not a male), and her 'jaded youth' was also unconvincing.
So disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: I hate SCI-FI, but I love this book.
Review: I'm only writing this comment because the main review above uses the "S-F" word to describe this book in its first sentence. This wonderful and humane novel only deserves that epithet if you would also apply it to "Brave New World" and "1984" and Martin Amis's "London Fields" and other literary representations of conceivable dystopias. This is a realistic picture of a world inhabited by people like us, a world in which certain current technological and societal trends are taken to a possible logical conclusion.
But it's a hopeful book too, because the world of this novel is NOT inevitable. There is still time for moral and philosophical judgements to temper those of technologists and businessmen with shorter-range victories in sight.
And despite some of the other reviews here, I loved the protaganist, Jimmy/Snowman. He's a fine representation of the last of the human race.
Rating:
Summary: Genetic Experimentation Gone Bad
Review: Margaret Atwood's latest is not the tour de force that The Handmaid's Tale was, nor does it contain the voluptuous prose of The Blind Assassin. The world the author creates is bizarre and ingenious, but she seems to do little with it other than to warn against genetic experimentation. It lacks moral punch and is interesting only for its inventiveness and use of language. The character of Oryx seems more like a convenient plot device, and the novel would not suffer without her. However, nothing that comes from the pen of Atwood is ever totally without merit. I expect mixed reactions from readers of this book
Rating:
Summary: One of the best Post Apocalypse novels I've ever read!
Review: I read the previous reviews and I take exception to the negative reviews!
Margaret Atwood's method and creation of the mind and life of Jimmy/Snowman is completely believable! From the adolescent to the adult, it is a consistent tour de force! Yes, there are men and boys that think like Jimmy and I have met some Crakes of my own. This women writer understands the minds of men.
Not only is this novel a paean to wordsmiths and the beauty and frailty of language; but it is also a book about the damage that the opposite genders can do to each other.
The puns are not obtrusive but thought provoking, (i.e. Crakers/ Quakers).
This book is Atwood at her greatest. I pray for a sequel because there is still much to tell and learn about the Crakers and their adaptation to Atwood's "New World."
This is a finely crafted work that will stay with me for a long time. Every time I leave my "compound" and go into the "plebe-lands" for entertainment I will see the parallels between real life verses Atwood's fiction of a possible real life.
H. R. Daniel Guerra
Rating:
Summary: one of her best
Review: I finished reading _Oryx and Crake_ about a half hour ago, and I still have goosebumps. My immediate advice: try to not read the professional reviews, because they give too much away. The dust jacket is okay, but don't go to oryxandcrake.com unless you've finished reading. I think most people can figure out the spliced vocabulary on their own. This book read a lot like _The Handmaid's Tale_, as though it were an extremely interesting documentary about a not very implausible future. Once I was 1/4 the way through the quick-reading narrative I could not put it down, and Atwood's brilliant way of putting thoughts and sentences together had me laughing and crying. I spotted a couple items that had woven their way into her future that are already true events and experiments, and I wondered: How much of the rest of _Oryx and Crake_ is already true? If you are a lover of Margaret Atwood, this book will not let you down. If you are not a reader of her books, start now. After finishing, you will never look at chicken nuggets the same way again... and you also might feel just a little paranoid.
Rating:
Summary: Welcome to Extropia!
Review: This novel should provoke lots of entertaining indignation among technophilic transhumanists---if, in fact, any of them actually read sophisticated critiques of their adolescent fantasies. For readers who keep up on developments in the fields of biotech, infotech, and nanotech, the book will not seem at all futuristic. For those who don't, it will seem fantastic in the extreme. This darkly humorous vision of our anarcho-capitalist, almost-here future is sure to delight all Atwood fans. What a great read!
Rating:
Summary: Crake and Oryx
Review: Iris Murdoch is dead. Margaret Atwood has the torch.
Rating:
Summary: WHY????
Review: "The Handmaiden's Tale." I never knew what the fuss was about, But at least the protagonist was female. Then came others. Short stories lovely, especially 'Rape Fantasies," poetry good. There was "The Robber Bride," which I gleefuly teach, and "The Blind Assassin," which I'll as gleefully teach very soon, stunning effort that it is. There is a feeling in these books of an author writing what she knows about/with people she knows and cares about, and so I care -- along with my students.
To my mind, the choice of male protagonist/3rd person perspective of "Snowman" is not fortuitous. Snowman is a convincing female, not male, as far as my female POV accommodates. The guy is uninteresting, cares about uninteresting things, probably is going to die an uninteresting death VERY soon (puhleese!), and, well, generally carries on in a most uninteresting manner. Uninteresting murderer -- but equally unteresting murderees! I only finished that book so I could write this review, which is a pretty poor reason to read anything.
Please -- as Ms Atwood is still with us unlike Carol Shields -- might we lobby for more of the things she does well and have her let those capable of "Apocalypse Now" do THEIR thing as she does hers? No more of this!
|
