From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Handmaid’s TaleOryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both … beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.
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If you like good, creepy sci-fi that hits a little too close to home (like most of Margaret’s work), read this! Its odd and confusing at first but once you get into it, things get W I L D.
I got pulled in to this story right from page one and couldn’t put it down until it was done. Margaret Atwood has such a twisted sense of humor that as dark and twisted as this tale was I was laughing the whole way through.
The book describes a bleak future for mankind, yet also an interesting and realistic one. Technology has advanced, yet so has rampant capitalism, superbugs, and civil unrest. One scientist decides to create a new improved sentient species, while releasing a virus to wipe out mankind to make room for them. The scientist’s friend was immune and in charge of teaching the new species how to survive. The story is exciting and the ending opens up many new possibilities. I highly recommend this book.
This is my favorite book written by Margaret Atwood. To be fair, I’ve never been disappointed by anything I’ve read by her, but something about this book has stayed with me for years.
This is a Margaret Atwood book which means poetic prose, speculative fiction that’s fear-based over science-based, and characters that are flawed-almost plausible-but that fall flat for anyone the reader can care about.
I can fully appreciate that Atwood is an exceptional writer and that I’m not naturally drawn into her style. I love speculative and literary books, but Atwood somehow misses both marks for me. I want a plot and I want characters. While her speculative fiction has more of a literary tendency, she doesn’t tend to bring an ‘A’ game to her characters. The difficulty with ‘Oryx and Crake’ characters is their total lack of believability. The book starts with Snowman being the last known man on Earth (not a spoiler as this is made clear right out the gate of the book). But he can barely take care of himself. His entire backstory consists of how others took care of him, but somehow this fumbling, bumbling man is our protagonist who is not only responsible for himself, but for the non-human humans in his care. Not. Believable.
The secondary characters are also difficult to digest. They are ‘almost’ characters. There’s a lot of the buildup to real people, but they fall flat into mehness. Motives are evil for wishy washy reasons. Forgiveness happens on a whim. The dirty people are stupid. The flirty people are easy. It goes on and on until there were too many stereotypes that I’d lost interest in who any of the supporting cast was.
Besides having issue with Atwood’s characters, I find it aggravating how she handles backstory. This is her style. It’s skilled and many prefer it. I am not one of those people. Atwood flips back and forth a lot between the past and the present. It would work if it was done with more connectivity between the then and the now, but frequently, the timelines were linear to themselves and not with the entire book. Just as I’d get interested in the scene, she’d cut to the other timeline and slow things down until I barely felt a thrill to get to the timeline I’d been excited about.
Honestly, it’s a good book if you enjoy Atwood’s style and stories. I am one who appreciates, but does not care for it.
TW Note: This book was published in 2003. There are topics of pedophilia and severe sexism to the point of emotional manipulation/abuse by the protagonist. Both of those topics are handled in the book in a very casual manner. While those were the societal views at the time the book was published, there are readers who may have significant difficulties reading those scenes.
This is a classic Atwood story and is turning definitely toward “science fiction” with the usual amount of “speculative” (and a lot of “food-for-thoughts”). In this book Atwood blends the dystopian with biology and medicine, an explosive mix. For Atwood followers, well worth reading.
Loved it
Into this most dark and pessimistic rendering of the possible/probable, Atwood redeems our apocalyptic preview with a sharply ironic Canadian wit and implied wisdom. Her use of language is masterful in its mirroring the genetic splicing and dicing of flora and fauna, in capturing both the jargon of the new Orwellian “doublespeak” and the nuances of an original word-crafter. At the same time her prose is alluringly, compellingly simple, as Snowman’s tumbled shelves of linguistic learning surface in a “brave new world” of “Children of Crake” where myth and humor alike are unknown.
Maybe once you have passed the gates of the media gatekeepers into the realm of speculative fiction and nonfiction, the truths of fiction and nonfiction start to merge and it hardly servers to keep the boundary distinct any longer.
In a world where wars can be fought on the basis of provable lies, and continued even after those lies are exposed, then writers can write any damn thing they please and it hardly matters. What matters is that the narrative holds together. When the narrative guiding world events falls apart, the world falls apart. It is then (it is still now) that a new narrative must be created to take its place. If that new narrative is coherent, and compelling, has the ring of truth, and demands no proving but the test of its taste in our mouths as we say or see the words, then that is the best that a writer can do to redeem our failing human spirits and lift us into the light of common understanding. If the story’s ending is bleak, so be it; even the Bible has no chapter after its final Revelations, alias Apocalypse. At least we go, go out or go on, knowing truth as best we can. Thank you, Margaret Atwood, for doing that best.
A Visionary Tale Coupled with Warnings from the other side
*self-purchased. No need of sugar daddies called promo teams*
What’s this book about? (I’m trying to give as little spoilers as possible)
Snowman used to be Jimmy, but that’s all in the past. Now, he lives in a tree and he’s responsible for the Children of Crake and Oryx, the woman that he loved, haunts him in his dreams.
This is my second Margaret Atwood read. I had to read it two years ago for a course in university. I honestly don’t know what to say about this piece of fiction. Atwood leaves me speechless. Oryx & Crake creates a world that is so deeply disturbing but not very far from our reality and that’s the truly scary part. The back and forth in time that we’re presented with in this story suits so well. In this installment, I must admit that the Children of Crake start out as annoying. I was more invested in the past than Snowman’s present. However, the more time passed the more they warmed up to me and in the third book, I cherished them a lot.
Let’s talk about Snowman. Jimmy is hands down one of the biggest douchebags in history of douchebags. This trilogy solely exists to stress how much of a douchebag he is, starting in book one and elevating it in book two. He has major mommy issues and he has commitment issues. His friendships are questionable and his after-school activities are extremely strange and also kind of disgusting. After reading book two and three, you realize that, no, not everyone is as deranged as Jimmy and the rest of his privileged crew (well, only one person & that’s Crake) are. However infuriating Jimmy was, he also proved to be an excellent storyteller. He had me hooked through his story as a pawn for his megalomaniac friend Crake.
Glenn aka Crake is… complex. Atwood adds more depth to him in the sequels, allowing you to comprehend him even better. In this book, he’s the brilliant guy who you should be scared of. I don’t know exactly what to think of him; he makes good points, but his way of doing things is just insane. He’s a major puppet master.
Glenn and Jimmy have a strong bond, perhaps it’s one-sided, only the Crake knows that. However, one thing that these two have in common for real is Oryx. She’s the girl that has swept these guys off their feet. I didn’t understand her much in this first book; she came across as a major faker. Characters in the second book agreed with me. Nonetheless, her story is one of hurt and tragedy. She came a long way and what eventually happened to her was devastating to me.
This is an intricate story that’s definitely not for the faint of heart. There are some disgusting things that Glenn, Jimmy and the society they live in are up to.
I recommend this to lovers of dystopian fiction with deep messages about our world (Atwood’s genius thrives in this universe that’s way more epic than Handmaid’s Tale), megalomaniac brilliant bad guys, and tortured and hopeless leading ‘heroes.‘
The Oryx trilogy is brilliant. Atwood does not disappoint with this decidedly unusual and off-the-wall look at a post-apocalyptic future. She fleshes out an ensemble of characters with pay-offs that carry on from book to book. I guarantee these aren’t like the type of end-of-humanity-as-we-know-it sf you’re accustomed to. Clever and original.
not one of her best , but good.
Where Atwood’s other dystopian world takes gender and sexual politics as its hook into just what humans can do to undo the world, this book and its sequels focus more on the environment, though the gender and other societal issues are never far from view here either.
I won’t say too much about the plot as there are some surprises here that aren’t worth spoiling. Suffice to say, that it’s worth it folks! These books depict some dark visions of humanity, but the that’s not where it stops. Atwood’s deft prose and compelling characters take us into the how and why of this dystopia on the personal level that motivates all our actions great and small.
Read it and weep! Read it and laugh! Whatever you do, read it!
This was one of those stories that I was still thinking about weeks and months after I’d finished it. In fact, I’m still thinking about it now. A genetic apocalypse of our own making, so very real and possible, all drawn together in Atwood’s glorious prose. I loved it.
While most know Atwood for Handmaid’s Tale (and for good enough reason), this book, along with the rest of the MaddAddam Trilogy, is incredible. The post-apocalyptic, not-so-distant-future world she has created is haunting, beautiful, and wonderfully weird. Some parts of the book hit close to home. Other parts leave you scratching your head and reeling. If you like fantasy, if you like post-apoc, or if you like literary prose, you’ll find something in this wonderful journey to appreciate.
OMG! This is an exploding firecracker of a start to the Maddaddam trilogy, and Atwood is a creative and literary genius. Her imagination is rich and twisted and her words make my brain sing. I will not bother explaining the plot. You just HAVE to read it. That is all.
In our GMO-obsessed world, Oryx and Crake is a cautionary tale of science run rampant. VERY entertaining, and quite prescient, especially in light of how long ago it was written. Margret Atwood does NOT disappoint!
I got forced to read this book in college, at first I didn’t want to and would lie to my professor over and over again that I had indeed read it, but in all honesty, I didn’t. That was until there was a week before our projects were due and I was practically forced to sit down during that class period and read it and I can now say I wish I would have read it when I was supposed to. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read, but I was judging it too harshly and that was because this book didn’t seem like something I would even like. I now have a very small library of 2 books that I have read that are outside my comfort zone.
This book took me by surprise, at first I was super confused with what was going on, maybe that had something to do with me not wanting to read it in general, but as I continued the story got more and more intriguing and continuously kept me coming back. I wanted to find out what had happened and how it had happened and more! There were suspenseful parts and shocking parts, the story literally kept you in the dark until the end and that was what made want to know more!
I would include more details, but it has been a while since I have read the book, 3 years to be more exact, but I find myself constantly thinking about how good it was and how I really enjoy books like this. Where the world isn’t as it should be and the author is basically creating this whole new world and giving the reader a new perspective. These kinds of books make me love to read because they are so quirky and different and unusual. Dystopian books, as I call them, ones where the world is nowhere like the one we live in, are my absolute favorite which is why this book makes the top of my list!
I cannot wait to read the second book!
With Oryx and Crake, the first book of her MaddAddam series, Margaret Atwood delivers a dystopic (but not completely hopeless) depiction of Earth following a catastrophic mass extinction event. The novel opens with an introduction to Snowman, a survivor whose story will be revealed through flashbacks and real-time descriptions in a world that has become intolerably hostile to human life. The reader is marooned in an environment of disturbing alterations- left to ponder the series of events that have led to such a devastating future. Atwood’s narrator Snowman (aka Jimmy), is character that is ultimately unreliable and frequently despicable. His skewed depiction of events and his selective memory is all the reader has as a guide, yet it cannot hide Snowman’s complicity in the catalyzing events that ultimately lead to the downfall of civilization. Margaret Atwood is truly gifted at worldbuilding, and the immersive setting is visceral and raw. Oryx and Crake sets the stage for the one of the main themes of the trilogy: the dichotomy of man’s relentless quest for dominance over the natural world, and his undeniable dependence upon it. This is deservedly one of Atwood’s most lauded books in her long career of excellent works.
Good for: Dystopic/Futuristic Science Fiction; highly rated award-winners; works addressing controversial environmental topics; genetic modification positives and negatives; Canadian authors; Science Fiction/Literary Fiction blends.
You may like this book if you liked: Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (or the Hulu series based on the book); Netflix’s Black Mirror Series; William Golding’s Lord of the Flies; and works by Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, Ursula Le Guin, and Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games trilogy).
One of the best dystopian novels I have read. I love Margaret Atwood books. Always something unusual.
If gene modification concerns you, then this book is a must read…
great character development in this dystopian world.