Rating: 
Summary: I hated Jimmy!
Review: I am more than a little surprised by the 4 and 5 star reviews. First of all, I loved Blind Assassin and Handmaid's Tale. But when I was reading this book, the "feeling" wasn't there. To be sure, the "Minority Report" futuristic world details were interesting, and, imo, the only reason to read this book. But could someone explain why Jimmy was left standing to caretake the world? His life seemed to be a total bore. When he is rambling on about his mother and his various girlfriends I wanted to throw the book across the room. And the coincidence of the epheremal Oryx appearing in his life seemed ridiculous. What purpose does her character serve? Thankfully I got this book at the library, not the bookstore. Give me the Crake diaries and maybe we'll have something!
Rating: 
Summary: You can have your Crake and eat it
Review: At first, I was dubious about Oryx and Crake. Margaret Atwood's Booker prize winning novel, The Blind Assassin, despite its honours, did have a few imperfections here and there. Oryx and Crake has also been compared with Margaret Atwood's other dystopian masterpiece, The Handmaid's Tale, and whilst the futuristic locale is similar, the tone is completely different. Would Margaret Atwood be able to create convincing and 'trendy' roadmap for peas?
There are always dangers when an older writer takes on 'yoof' culture as one of their themes, and authors such as P D James have recently been lambasted for their 'ageing' prose. A great deal of Oryx and Crake is devoted to 'maturing' of Jimmy and Crake, and the kind of entertainment that they consume. Naturally enough for early teens, they gravitate to internet porn (no matter how secure your adult passwords and keys, your genius progeny is likely to work out how to bypass them). It helps greatly that Margaret Atwood is never judgemental, and could even be said to indulge Jimmy's appetites. Margaret Atwood's main weapon of mass destruction here is her piercing wit, which is exactly the right tone for a successful depiction of the future at the moment, I feel. It's certainly the tone that I have adopted myself in similar fictions (my recollection of The Handmaid's Tale is that it took itself a lot more seriously). The future of reality TV here is displayed in all its gory detail here, and I think that Margaret Atwood is very much correct in having most of this 'TV' be disseminated via the internet. She also skilfully deals with 'yoof' culture and language, opting for the safety of Jimmy and Crake getting their buzzwords from old DVDs. The only foot she puts wrong is when she writes that most libraries have got rid of their books and replaced them with CD-ROMs in the future: this medium is actually on the way out and is being replaced by DVD-ROMs (although I have myself been a recent convert to the CD-Rom). One of the most stunning things about Oryx and Crake is the number of new names that Margaret Atwood comes up with, most of them brand names (a reflection of the linguistic innovations that the naming of internet websites has forced upon us, 'Authortrek' being no exception). I wonder, if like 'A Clockwork Orange', Oryx and Crake's nomenclature will be taken up by pop artists and their ilk? Although one 'Amanda Payne' looks to have successfully bid to have her name included in this novel, and I'm sure that she will be better pleased with the results than whoever bid to be included in Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man. I admit that it did take a hundred pages before I really fell in love with this novel (the depiction of Oryx's upbringing being the turning point). Not that Oryx's story is without its complications: just how much of it is 'real' (an important question always in this novel), and how much of it is fiction invented by Jimmy? Margaret Atwood takes no sides here, with even the exploitative Uncle En and Jack being treated with a great deal of compassion, along of course, with the greatest killer that mankind has never known. She discusses the current paranoia regarding paedophilia with a great deal of intelligence. It is not only Jimmy who promulgates such fictions: the 'Crakers' seemingly having 'innocence' imprinted into them, something of which the hypocritical Victorians would no doubt approve. Margaret Atwood's creation of Crake is truly authentic, and his fate is the most logical consequence of his actions (although whether he has been getting enough or too much REM sleep is a moot point). From the middle of the novel to its resolution, Oryx and Crake becomes one of the most compelling thrillers that I have ever read. No doubt the clever, authentic and yet subtle (UK) cover will put off the average thriller reader, but those who do discover it will be greatly entertained. Oryx and Crake is still brain candy, but it's an exciting and vital brand of brain candy.
Although Jimmy is a marketeer or a spin merchant, I was not too convinced by his desire to save antiquated words: I think this is more Margaret Atwood's concern. Some of the words she chooses to promote in italics are not all that antiquated... yet (remember that Jimmy is writing some thirtyish years into the future, if the reference to the dot.com bubble is anything to go by). But at times of troubles, these old words do express Jimmy's troubled state of mind much better than anything else (for definitions of many of these old words, please see below). At first, I was not truly convinced by Jimmy's efforts to survive: he's not exactly in Piscine Molitor Patel's class when it comes down to the reading of survival manuals and the lengths that he goes to survive. However, the fact that Jimmy has survived at all is due to some artificial means, and unlike Pi, he is not truly 'alone'. Besides, the satire of self-help books is necessary and inevitable, with Margaret Atwood anticipating one of my own future fictions. The depiction of Snowman/Jimmy as an incompetent survivalist becomes more appealing as the novel proceeds, for here Jimmy is the epitome of 'everyman' in such an extreme situation. The ending has the lack of closure that is bound to incur lengthy debates in reading groups, and is much more satisfactory than the rather more artificial hook that Margaret Atwood left hanging in The Blind Assassin. Much more importantly, the critical endorsement of this previous novel has produced a bolder and a 'devil-may-care' attitude from Margaret Atwood. More than anything else, 'Oryx and Crake' proves how readable, accessible, vital, and innovative the modern literary novel can be.
Rating:
Summary: Atwood always amazes me!!
Review: The human race has come to an end. There is only one true human - the Snowman as the Crakers have learnt to call him or rather know him. He is the one - the narrator who recounts the tale of Oryx and Crake - of friendship, betrayal, love and above all the need to play GOD. Genetic Engineering has always fascinated mankind and it is on this premise that Atwood's latest offering begins. Jimmy alias Snowman is one of a kind. The only human alive - with everything destroyed - living to tell the story of his life. Set in a future called Compounds - where the new-age beings reside with comforts galore - Jimmy recounts the past - of his parents, of creatures known as Pigoons and Wolvogs (again genetically engineered), of his only friend Crake and the love of his life Oryx and how everything came to an astounding end. Atwood has done it again. I loved the book from the word go though there were way too many pieces of prose hanging in-between and somehow the storyline was blurred in bits and pieces. However, Ms. Atwood has managed to create a world that leaves Handmaid's Tale far far behind. Read it.... Its awesome.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Bad
Review: Not bad, but Atwood adopts a sort of psuedo-naive narrative style when relating certain portentious or downright evil events in Snowman's and Oryx's recollection of their childhoods that is a little grating after a while, knowing, as it does, that the events it recalls are anything but innocent and harmless. Actually this is a problem with the whole book. It's set in the future, after "the accident" and it seems almost exhausted at times with the effort to bother to elaborate on how all the things we knew were going to happen did; global warming, genetic tinkering, the eventual madman committing the inevitable and unthinkable. It's almost as if Atwood wanted to just write, or maybe shout, Oh you all knew but you did nothing and so of course this happened and what, what did you expect? And somewhere I read a review that lauded all the solid science that was supposed to be integrated into the book. There isn't much. Maybe I was a little let down because I had recently read another book of hers, The Handmaiden's Tale. Besides being a much better crafted book, I think the fascist, theocratic United States of the future that it portrays is a much more imminent and likely threat. Sort of a social WMD, if you will, but this one really is right on our doorstep. Still a highly creative and detailed imagining of the future, and worth reading. If you were God and starting the world anew, what sort of humanity would *you* create?
Rating:
Summary: Class dismissed
Review: Reading this felt like an assignment from a class given by an angry, head-shaking, finger-waving instructor. The tone is stridently pessimistic & no opportunity is overlooked to drive a sharp rusty nail of dystopian imagery into ones' brain. While the ideas covered here (they ARE important - mostly about the present & potential moral corruption in the bio-engineering industries) can be quite clever, they're not terribly new. Plus they're presented like a stand-up comic's set of disaster bullet-lists (ever here the one about the chicken with six breasts & no wings?), so that ultimately one is just left numbed & with a temporary loss of appetite. These arguments have been presented more effectively by J.G. Ballard or Tom Disch. The book revolves around 3 mostly uni-dimensional characters, the least convincing being the eponymous Oryx, a kind of sub-Anime Asian baby-doll victim/goddess. Crake is a grown-up nightmare survivor of Lord of the Flies. Snowman is a future Philip Seymour Hoffman role. The author writes with a heavy & humorless hand & projects a kind of tony pessimism of someone who's too world-weary to make constructive suggestions & who's never, my guess, toiled in the fields of technology or commerce. My advice: get this if you like your beach read filled with hopelessness & guilt.
Rating:
Summary: Bleak vision of the future
Review: A very bleak vision on the future where master scientists live behind guarded walls and you can order children on demand. Attwood is intolerably bleak in her future and this is the central weakness of the book. There is no humour of fun - apart from sexual exploitation and drugs. If it is satire, it is satire of the blackest kind. There is no hint of mercy or even hope in this novel and Atwood's characters never really connect with the reader. After reading it, I went outside to consider what warning, Atwood was giving society and it was really not a warning, I feel it was a prophecy. It was depressing to say the least. THe situation as it becomes clear, it is the blackest vision of the future I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling Literary Soft Science Fiction
Review: Like any genre, science fiction has certain themes that authors repeatedly explore. In the case of Oryx and Crake, that theme is the Last Man on Earth. Despair frequently dominates such tales. That is the obvious, most direct story. In Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood rises above that to create a tale of hope in the face of that despair. The Last Man, Snowman, takes care of a group of genetically modified people, Crakers, who are ignorant of human civilization. They have all the innocence of Adam and Eve before the fall. Crake created them as a fresh start to civilization, or rather, as a fresh start to humanity without the burdens of civilization (i.e. war, hatred, jealousy, love, creativity, ambition, pride, etc.) Snowman doles out information about how to survive as myths revolving around instructions given by Oryx and Crake, the parents and gods of the Crakers. As Oryx and Crake, opens, Snowman is a long way down the road of despair and insanity. He lives apart from the Crakers, not wanting to disturb the delicate balance of their primitive idyllic existence. When he is not interacting with the Crakers, Snowman reminisces about his life before the end of the world. It is through this nostalgic window that Snowman tells the body of the story. Here he shows life in an increasingly malleable world. Pigs are bred to host spare human parts, including brain tissue. Chicken breasts are grown separate from the rest of the bird. Dogs are combined with wolves to create killing machines that appear friendly until the moment of attack. Through BlyssPluss, a pill which enhances sexual prowess, cures every sexually transmitted disease and is a perfect contraceptive, civilization engages in the ultimate orgy. If God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden for eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, then perhaps the only way to return to Eden is to purge knowledge and regain ignorance. In this case, ignorance is BlyssPluss. Biblical analogies abound in Oryx and Crake. The genetically modified Crakers originally reside in a controlled environmental dome called Paradice. The Crakers have no knowledge of good or evil; they copulate freely when the females are in heat without any jealousy or love. Snowman can be compared to any number of biblical figures, including Satan, Moses and Jesus. Oryx plays roles reminiscent of Eve, the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. Crake plays the role of God and Satan in all guises. Such metaphors are inevitable and intriguing to contemplate. In Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood creates a compelling, literary science fiction novel. The trinity of Oryx, Crake and Snowman form a perfectly ill-balanced triangle. Against the post-apocalyptic backdrop of genetically blended creatures surviving the final plague, this depth of the various relationships is explored through the eyes of Snowman, the lone survivor. This well-told tale is one of hope, despite (or perhaps because of) the despair of one man alone.
Rating:
Summary: Politically Correct Nihilism
Review: Margaret Atwood's latest novel begins with Jimmy "the Snowman" struggling to survive after a horrible apocalypse that may have killed the rest of humanity. The only other humans are the new ones created by the genetic engineer "Crake," who were taught by the beautiful "Oryx." As the book proceeds we switch back and forth between Jimmy's present, a ravaged future where creatures such as pigoons, wolvogs, bobkittens and ordinary vultures scourge the ruined landscape, and the story of his past. Jimmy grew up in a prosperous family where his father worked with a genetic engineering company. The planet had already been savaged by ecological disaster, but the wealthy and powerful blithely continued their tampering of nature. Now the theme of scientists muddling with nature and making a botch of it goes back to Mary Shelley. And the same theme has been dealt with by Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Aldous Huxley and John Wyndham. What does Atwood add? Well, there is Atwood's trademark professional style and wit, a style and wit that may yet win her the Nobel prize that she so definitely does not deserve. In discussing the shallow, selfish scientific world before its destruction, she discusses such frivolous inventions as mechanical dogs that have been programmed to urinate, or the sentient aphrodisiac wallpaper. Then there is the chorus line the naked male Children of Crake when they start their pre-programmed mating rituals. Less amusing and more frightening are the headless and legless chickens designed for our eating pleasure. My favourite are the artificial rocks that are lighter but more efficient than real ones. But ultimately the book suffers from the flaws common to all of Atwood's novels. Read once Atwood appears stimulating and thoughtful. Read a second time we see her as glib and facile, a purveyor of middlebrow paradoxes. At one point Jimmy summarizes his best friend's view as that humanity is doomed by hope. At another point Jimmy asks himself whether someone was mad or a "honourable man who'd thought things to their logical conclusion? And was there any difference?" Well considering that the person in question is guilty of genocide, yes, there kind of is. Some of Jimmy's comments are pseudo-profound ("You could tell a lot about a person from their fridge magnets...") in such a way that Atwood can take credit for them if they work and disassociate herself from them if they don't. But as with Updike, a glib and facile style only hides other problems. Atwood could develop characters but she has no desire to understand other people, and she has no desire to subject herself or her own opinions to any serious self-examination. Although Atwood has a reputation as a feminist it would be more accurate to describe her as a solipsist. It is true that the best two characters in the book are women. One is Jimmy's mother who leaves to combat the scientific insanity of her world and is brutally executed for it. The other is Oryx, who is as sweet as saccharin and about as healthy, and who despite a horrible life as a child sex slave and a prostitute is nothing but loving and forgiving towards everyone she meets. And when Jimmy and Crake look up pornography on the internet it is always unremittingly vile, such as child porn and bestiality, before they go on to look at websites of live executions and suicides. But on the other hand there is the cold snotty description in chapter ten of Jimmy's stepmother as she seeks to have a baby. At first Atwood's contempt for her may appear puritanical, but in reality it is snobbish and sarcastic. Jimmy himself fluctuates from being a moral idiot to being a mouthpiece for Atwood's "concerns" about genetic engineering. When he sees poor people for the first time he thinks they will kick up their heels like in a thirties musical. Although several people close to him have been murdered or subjected to appalling cruelty, he lives his life in an apolitical haze, never having a serious intellectual discussion and showing no imagination, curiosity, indignation, gentleness, despair or passion. (No one else finds this odd or abnormal, by the way.) And there is no attempt to get into the minds of the corporate technocrats here, just as there was no real attempt to appreciate the husband in The Blind Assassin, or the fundamentalists in The Handmaid's Tale or the Victorian elite in Alias Grace. Other novels have dealt with the extinction of humanity. They are usually not very successful. Mary Shelley's The Last Man is very tedious, while books like The Gnomids are often heavy-handed parables. But even flawed works like Cat's Cradle or A Canticle for Lebowitz had a certain frission when nuclear holocaust was a major possibility. There is something different in Atwood's account, something rancid. We never learn from Atwood why one of her key characters is a complete lunatic who is blithely guilty of murder and mass murder. But then maybe he isn't insane at all. No one seems to recognize that his plans are evil and inhumane, and the conclusion we are meant to draw is that he is not really all that different from his fellow scientists and the enormous corporations that they serve. It is not a murder at all, really, more like a suicide. To which I say, cheap nihilist poppycock. There is no real sense of horror or regret or agony or destroyed hope when his atrocity occurs, just Atwood's sense of superiority to her characters. Celine and Bernhard write of a loveless world; Atwood's creation simply shows a woman who keeps her cards close to her chest. She is not pessimistic, just smug. There is something very Canadian about this. For only someone who lived in the sheltered prosperous world of upper middle-class English Protestant Canadians could be glib and cold about the genocide of humanity.
Rating:
Summary: Stick with it!
Review: It took one false start and two months for me to finally say: "right I'm reading it" and to have a proper go at Oryx and Crake.
And while I did not hold out any great hopes that I would enjoy it at all, I am happy now to admit I was wrong.
The first two chapters are heavy going - it is difficult to make out, at first, exactly what it's all about. And though my heart sank a little when I discovered the Si-Fi theme, I plodded on and rejoiced on coming to sounder ground.
Atwood's latest offering is actually highly enjoyable - though certainly not a light read.
The debate on GM produce and tampering with genetics is thought-provoking and could make this the 1984 or Brave New World of our times.
And while I did prefer A Handmaid's Tale, this definitely merits a look - even if you do have to take a little time over the start.
Rating: 
Summary: No gain, just pain
Review: This novel intrigued me while I was reading it but in the end it left me dissatisfied. I thought it would be better, deeper, more visionary...something. The concept of genetic experimentation gone bad doesn't seem original to me. I kept expecting a twist, but that was all there was. I felt ripped off at the end because I experienced all that end-time horror to no real purpose. Okay, genetic engineering is dangerous, smart people who try to outsmart or deny God are dangerous, western civilization is a cesspool of shallow preoccupation with self and consumerism, corporate manipulation of social structures is scary--tell me something I don't already know! And the obsession with the kiddie porn was not necessary and so repetitive it actually became tiresome. Was Ms. Atwood writing this for the pervs in her audience or what? The invention of a character terribly used by society who does not resent that misuse because the alternative was even worse was a good theme that made me think but I resented being drowned in such horrific images of child/woman abuse to get there. Shame on Ms. Atwood--I am sure she could have crafted the novel without using her awesome talent to inject the lowest forms of porn into mainstream literature. I loved The Handmaid's Tale, but I felt used, abused and ultimately cheated by Oryx. I don't care how many prizes it gets from literary folks, as far as I am concerned this book was a waste of my time. I don't think I came away with any new ideas except that I will read the reviews of the next Atwood novel before I crack it open.
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