Product Description

Pigs might not fly but they are strangely altered. So, for that matter, are wolves and racoons. A man, once named Jimmy, lives in a tree, wrapped in old bedsheets, now calls himself Snowman. The voice of Oryx, the woman he loved, teasingly haunts him. And the green-eyed Children of Crake are, for some reason, his responsibility. 'In Jimmy, Atwood has created a great character: a tragic-comic artist of the future, part buffoon, part Orpheus. An adman who's a sad man; a jealous lover who's in perpetual mourning; a fantasist who can only remember the past' - Independent 'Gripping and remarkably imagined' - London Review of Books

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5934 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 436 pages

Review
'Atwood at her best - dark, dry, scabrously witty, yet moving and studded with flashes of pure poetry. Her gloriously inventive brave new world is all the more chilling because of the mirror it holds up to our own' Lisa Appignanesi, The Independent Magazine 'Atwood herself is one of our finest linguistic engineers. Her carefully calibrated sentences are formulated to hook and paralyse the reader' Saturday Telegraph ' Oryx and Crake is a parable, an imaginative text for the antiglobalisation movement' Observer 'enlivening, deadpan wit and the mix of empathy and insight she always brings to her characters... Saturated in science, the novel is simulatneously alive with literary resonances... This superlatively gripping and remarkably imagined book joins The Handmaid's Tale in the distinguished company of novels that look ahead to warn us about the results of human short-sightedness.' Sunday Times 'A success and a breakthrough ... Who would have guessed she could do male teenagers so brilliantly, or produce such a fast-paced thriller? And that she could so smoothly integrate these effects with a tightly worked out and intellectually gripping sci-fi mystery?' Elaine Showalter, London Review of Books 'A fable of genetic engineering set in an indeterminate future. One of the book's strengths is the way in which this future only gradually comes to seem less like our own time, and the experiments that result in global catastrophe seem plausibly connected to what we read in newspapers...Atwood has an advertiser's eye for naming, and her coinings make the novel glitter.' Erica Wagner, The Times 'A complex and effective exploration of a futuristic nightmare.' Boyd Tonkin, The Independent 'The Canadian master's most successful venture into the near future since The Handmaid's Tale.' Fiachra Gibbons, The Guardian 'A novel that absolutely sizzles with ideas ... A writer of supreme literary intelligence.' Nigel Reynolds, The Telegraph 'a triumph of intelligence and imagination working in sizzling cooperation' - Peter Kemp, Sunday Times 'an intellectually refined hybrid of philosophical ideas (subtle, Beckett-like intimations of language itself shuddering to a halt) and prophetic vision, full of chimerical beasts and feverish imaginings in which we see our own world through a glass darkly' Sunday Times 'Troubling and lyrical, Atwood stays faithful to her trademark futuristic infatuations, while neatly critiquing the status quo.' Daily Telegraph '"In the beginning, there was chaos..." Margaret Atwood's chilling new novel Oryx and Crake moves beyond the futuristic fantasy of her 1985 bestseller The Handmaid's Tale to an even more dystopian world, a world where language--and with it anything beyond the merest semblance of humanity--has almost entirely vanished. Snowman may be the last man on earth, the only survivor of an unnamed apocalypse. Once he was Jimmy, a member of a scientific elite; now he lives in bitter isolation and loneliness, his only pleasure the watching of old films on DVD. His mind moves backwards and forwards through time, from an agonising trawl through memory to relive the events that led up to sudden catastrophe (most significantly the disappearance of his mother and the arrival of his mysterious childhood companions Oryx and Crake, symbols of the fractured society in which Snowman now finds himself, to the horrifying present of genetic engineering run amok. His only witnesses, eager to lap up his testimony, are "Crakers", laboratory creatures of varying strengths and abilities, who can offer little comfort. Gradually the reasons behind the disaster begin to unfold as Snowman undertakes a perilous journey to the remains of the bubble-dome complex where the sinister Paradice Project collapsed and near-global devastation began. This, Atwood's 11th novel, confirms her as one of our most contemporary novelists. Darkly humorous and icily prescient, Oryx and Crake shows a writer deeply concerned with the stark moral issues facing the human race, and accords a glimpse of a future that lies all too uneasily within reach.' - Catherine Taylor, AMAZON.CO.UK

Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
‘A complex and effective exploration of a futuristic nightmare’

Fiachra Gibbons, The Guardian
‘The Canadian master’s most successful venture into the near future since The Handmaid’s Tale’

Customer Reviews

Interesting and thought provoking
Having read other Atwood novels, and science fiction novels, I found this book an entertaining mixture of both. Yes, she may not explain the science bits in detail but that's not really the point. She gives you enough detail to set the scene and explores the character of Jimmy/Snowman in a post-apocalyptic world. I found it gripping and darkly comic. Ignore all the moaning about this book, I would definitely recommend it!!

Please don't take the 'science' in this book seriously.
This book was an excellent read. Atwood skilfully draws out the character of Jimmy / Snowman, leading us through his life and letting us see a fantastical, futuristic science dominated world through his eyes. Although I did find the more obscure characters of Crake and Oryx sometimes too flat, too unexplained. Perhaps a little too much mystery for my liking, especially as they give the aftermath/past flashbacks a sense of slow, unstoppable doom that flavours all of Jimmy's experiences.

Taking a couple of examples from modern day scientific research, and mixing in simple ideas of possible future research- designer humans, transgenic animal organs, gene splicing to study diseases- Atwood creates a very interesting world, revealing it slowly piece by piece. Here, she exploits the fears and ideas of what science might bring the world to in the future. But I really would not call this book a serious warning of what the future holds. It's a fantasy, a great story, mysterious, innovative, interesting.

Yet without a bit of proper research, you really can't validate an opinion of genetic engineering from what's casually tossed about in a fiction book. The whole story is based on an ominous premise about a futuristic dystopia and the lives and effects of two very different people growing up in it. It's great, it provokes thought on human nature, but take it all with a pinch of salt!

A serious message *and* an enjoyable read
I enjoy Science Fiction (or Speculative Fantasy, if you prefer) when it extrapolates from the current situation and develops themes to give us a 'What If?' world of the future. What If... we used pigs to grow organs for human transplant? What If... we developed guard dogs that couldn't be tamed? What If... a mad scientist tried to wipe the slate clean and return the world back to its Garden of Eden status?

Margaret Atwood has neatly and enjoyably tied all these threads together, and thrown in half a tonne more social commentary about parental relationships, child abuse, sexual trafficing, globalisation, the ethics of genetics and whether it's right to lie to your girlfriend (or boyfriend).

Her exceptional talent is that you don't feel as if you're being lectured, nor do you get bogged down in a sudden deluge of righteousness. This big novel scampers along at a good pace. You can empathise with Jimmy-the-Snowman who is our lead character, and you can hope for his eventual redemption (even if it is a touch unlikely). I suspect it panders to the audience a little, in that we can feel smug when the idiot-savant genius mad scientists inevitably destroy their own world, but that's no bad thing.

Atwood has pulled together the threads of SF to build a relevant novel which comments on our society, but which is entertaining and involving even if you don't much care for the underlying message. It's easy to read in chunks -- took me four or five days of a half hour each day -- and is the kind of book which inspires you to take an extra half hour off, just so youy can see how it turns out.

Will it date? No more than Animal Farm, 1984, Frankenstein or The Time Machine have dated, and they all use much the same format. Science Runs Wild! Humanity Perishes! Serves us Right! Etc.

I've not read any Atwood for a while -- this was probably the first of her novels I've picked up for 7 or 8 years -- but enjoyed this one so much I'll look out for her next.