Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Margaret Atwood is a classic story teller. All of her works are very well crafted to play out slowly and deftly, in a way that really makes you think and anticipate the climactic scenes. This novel was completely engrossing.
It is a well spun tale of a post apocalyptic world, featuring a man named "Snowman" by a group of creatures of which he is not one.
His isolation is the key component of the drama of this tale. He has no one to relate to except the Children of Crake, who beseech him to tell them about their creator and the mysterious disappearance of their wise and loving teacher, Oryx. His memories make up the rest of the story, and these memories are only revealed piecemeal as Snowman torments himself with his former life, his loves, friendships and misunderstandings of things once so crucial, which have now been made irrelevant. The whys and wherefores are exactly what Atwood keeps from letting you know, until you, and Snowman, are ready to understand.

The vulnerability given in love and in true lif-long friendships is explored in painful ways here. Snowman, who was once Jimmy, is so adept at making himself cool and unmoved, that even he doesn't realize how deeply he needs to give himself and be given to, until it is too late to undo a lifetime of neglect. Crake, whose actions seem sociopathic at first, seem in hindsight the endeavors of a misunderstood, underloved and cerebral man whose own ability to love is woefully underestimated.

This book really captures a long, painful downward spiral of society, of ethics, of human sympathy in favor of development and progress. But to what end?

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