Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood

book data

13,588 ratings, 3.90 average rating, 1,738 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		31%
4		38%
3		21%
2		6%
1		2%

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published

March 2004 by Bt Bound (first published 2003)

details

Library Binding

characters

Snowman, Oryx, Crake

literary awards

Man Booker Prize Nominee (2003), Orange Broadband Prize (2004), Giller Prize Nominee (2003)

isbn

1417622075 (isbn13: 9781417622078)

description

In a science fiction novel that is more Swift than Heinlein, more cautionary tale than "fictional science" (no flying cars here), Margaret A…more

[close] In a science fiction novel that is more Swift than Heinlein, more cautionary tale than "fictional science" (no flying cars here), Margaret Atwood depicts a near-future world that turns from the merely horrible to the horrific, from a fool's paradise to a bio-wasteland. Snowman (a man once known as Jimmy) sleeps in a tree and just might be the only human left on our devastated planet. He is not entirely alone, however, as he considers himself the shepherd of a group of experimental, human-like creatures called the Children of Crake. As he scavenges and tends to his insect bites, Snowman recalls in flashbacks how the world fell apart.

While the story begins with a rather ponderous set-up of what has become a clichéd landscape of the human endgame, littered with smashed computers and abandoned buildings, it takes on life when Snowman recalls his boyhood meeting with his best friend Crake: "Crake had a thing about him even then. . . . He generated awe . . . in his dark laconic clothing." A dangerous genius, Crake is the book's most intriguing character. Crake and Jimmy live with all the other smart, rich people in the Compounds, gated company towns owned by biotech corporations. (Ordinary folks are kept outside the gates in the chaotic "pleeblands.") Meanwhile, beautiful Oryx, raised as a child prostitute in Southeast Asia, finds her way to the West and meets Crake and Jimmy, setting up an inevitable love triangle. Eventually Crake's experiments in bioengineering cause humanity's shockingly quick demise (with uncanny echoes of SARS, ebola, and mad cow disease), leaving Snowman to try to pick up the pieces. There are a few speed bumps along the way, including some clunky dialogue and heavy-handed symbols such as Snowman's broken watch, but once the bleak narrative gets moving, as Snowman sets out in search of the laboratory that seeded the world's destruction, it clips along at a good pace, with a healthy dose of wry humour. --Mark Frutkin

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Oct 01, 2008

Lindsay rated it:

(review of isbn 0747562598)

bookshelves: dystopia, genetic-engineering, margaret-atwood, postapocalyptic, read-for-fun, read-in-college, science-fiction

Read in January, 2005

recommends it for: diehard Atwood fans

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

This is the second dystopia Atwood has written, and I think it's less successful than The Handmaid's Tale. Her vision here is of a not-too-distant future in which the US is divided into corporate-owned gated communities where the (biotech) companies' owners and highly-paid skilled workforce live and the lawless, sprawling urban wasteland where everyone else lives.

Unlike virtually every other Atwood book I know of, the two main characters are male. The narrator, Jimmy, and his childh...more This is the second dystopia Atwood has written, and I think it's less successful than The Handmaid's Tale. Her vision here is of a not-too-distant future in which the US is divided into corporate-owned gated communities where the (biotech) companies' owners and highly-paid skilled workforce live and the lawless, sprawling urban wasteland where everyone else lives.

Unlike virtually every other Atwood book I know of, the two main characters are male. The narrator, Jimmy, and his childhood friend Crake grow up inside one of the gated communities, bonding over Internet pornography and shared cynicism. As Crake grows up, it becomes evident that he is a genius, so he gets accepted to an elite science-and-technology school and drafted into a biotech firm while he's still a student. While he works there, he cooks up an apocalyptic plot to release a superbug disguised as a libido-enhancing pill once he's perfected his own synthetic race of humanoids, which he designed as an answer to everything he's identified as "wrong" with human nature. For example, the "Crakers" have photosynthetic pigment in their skins, which means they do not have to kill to eat. Crake also designed them to be cheerfully promiscuous and have obvious signals of sexual receptivity, thus eliminating conflict over sex. Crake's a real humanitarian, except for the whole "kill off Mankind 1.0" part of his plan.

Structurally, the novel suffers from being too long and taking too long for the story to move forward. Indeed, the whole thing is told in flashbacks, with Jimmy reminiscing as the Crakers pester him for stories of their creator. Atwood erred on the side of too much description in Handmaid's Tale as well, but that was a shorter novel (maybe 100 less pages than Oryx and Crake) and the society she was revealing to us was better realized.

Also, a lot of touches that were clearly meant to be satirical fall flat. One of Crake and Jimmy's favorite pastimes in youth is playing computer games, and the games Atwood comes up with are transparent attempts to shock us with the nihilism of her young antiheroes. Also, every other object in the novel is given some cutesy brand name. This is clearly an attempt to mock the corporatization of global culture, but the effect is just irritating.

None of the characters particularly register, either. Two of Atwood's trademark Elusive Women figure in this novel --- Jimmy's mother runs off while Jimmy is a preteen, for reasons we never learn, and when Jimmy meets up with Crake again when they are adults, and Crake is designing his new species, Crake has a mistress named Oryx, who never allows either man to get to know her, though she sleeps with both. The difference between these and other Elusive Women (say, Grace Marks in Alias Grace, Zenia in The Robber Bride, Joan in Lady Oracle or Marian in The Edible Woman) is that the others either revealed themselves to the reader if not to the men in their lives, or (like Zenia and Grace) gave us enough interesting possibilities that we cared to speculate as to their true natures. These women elude not only Jimmy and Crake, but also the reader.

The men, though given (many) more pages of character development, are nearly as flat. Crake is a clear instance of metaphor abuse: he is indicated to be "mildly autistic," as the college he attends is nicknamed Asperger's U. and he disparages his old high school as containing "wall-to-wall neurotypicals." As his autism never appears in his behavior or becomes relevant to the story (indeed, it is never mentioned except in the chapter titled "Asperger's U."), I suspect it was only brought up to underscore the single salient point of his character, which is his detachment from the rest of the human species. The sole salient point of Jimmy's character seems to be that he is not Crake. (less)

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Oct 20, 2009

Kemper rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

bookshelves: apocalypse-now, sci-fi-fantasy

Read in November, 2009

Geez. That was the most depressing apocalypse ever.

A guy called Snowman is playing caretaker and prophet to a strange new race of people he calls the Crakers in the ruins of civilization. As Snowman forages for supplies, his recollections make up the story of what caused a massive biological and ecological disaster that has apparently wiped all the old humans out except for him.

Snowman’s past takes place in our near future where he was once known as Jimmy in a society...more

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6 comments

Sep 28, 2007

James rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

bookshelves: contemporary-fiction, science-fiction

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: Looking for something different

This is the first book I've ever read by Margaret Atwood. I wrote a story years ago that people told me was a lot like "The Handmaid's Tale" and since have been afraid to read her out of fear of connection. I grew out of it but figured I'd start with a more recent work. I liked this book a whole lot, and if it weren't for a few parts in the book, I might have given it four or even five stars. The story was dark and moving throughout and kept me interested to the very end. The prob...more This is the first book I've ever read by Margaret Atwood. I wrote a story years ago that people told me was a lot like "The Handmaid's Tale" and since have been afraid to read her out of fear of connection. I grew out of it but figured I'd start with a more recent work. I liked this book a whole lot, and if it weren't for a few parts in the book, I might have given it four or even five stars. The story was dark and moving throughout and kept me interested to the very end. The problem was that several of the important points (emotional and plot driven sequences) felt rushed despite the rest of the narrative being intellectually dense. This novel could have been a hundred pages longer and it probably would have only made it better. I'd be surprised if readers couldn't guess the two major parts I'm talking about if asked to guess (I'm not mentioning any to save the plot line for those who haven't read the book, its worth a read).

While Oryx and Crake are two of the main characters, the protagonist is centrally Jimmy, or the Snowman, who may or may not be the last figure of the mankind we know of (the suggestion of mankind's extinction is not the premise really). I found a lot of relevance in myself to this book, and not because the protagonist and I share the same name and (strangely true) not because his parents also share the same names as mine, the relevance is in how Atwood constructs this dark dystopia with images and scientific advancements that already exist today. The future of "Oryx and Crake" is too near-distant and familiar to allow a decent nights sleep to the conscientious reader.

Atwood is a clearly a great writer and it humbles me to know that I've put off the pleasure of reading her for so long. Ive often heard her described as a prophet, and while I don't know if she would necessarily shun the title, I think it is more accurate to say that she writes blueprints for the actions of humanity. For though her stories contain future and science fiction elements, the eerie and unsettling aspect of her work is that her characters act exactly how humans act anyway. There is nothing in these future human actions that differ from our race at present. (less)

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Aug 07, 2007

Cori rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: those who don't mind feeling uneasy.

From my blog:

This book was creep-tastically good. Seriously. Reading it disqueted my soul in a way that made me lose my appetite and really hope that this is fiction and not prophecy.

Atwood has a knack for writing dystopian novels that are set in the near-enough future to be completely relevant. She basically takes things that we have today, and stretches them into a terrifying future (as she did in the Handmaid's Tale, one of my all-time favorite books). In Oryx and Cra...more

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Dec 28, 2007

Ratiocination rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

Read in December, 2005

A mainstream author writing science fiction badly. Basically, tries to have it both ways: referencing real-world, present-day biotechnology without bothering to be accurate about it. I didn't enjoy reading it, and I don't like the implication-- that writing SF just involves throwing terminology around. One wouldn't have much patience for a legal thriller that ignored basic courtroom procedure; one wouldn't have much patience for a medical drama that got human anatomy wrong. I don't have much pa...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

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Sep 29, 2009

Ryan rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

bookshelves: dystopia, sci-fi

Read in December, 2009

Having read The Handmaid's Tale, I suspected, and then proved myself correct, that this was another two-steps-forward one-step-back Atwood story. Atwood bothers me that way. Reading a few pages of what's going on currently, only to suddenly be jerked back into the past by the next paragraph, makes me feel like my reading experience is being interrupted the same way as it would be if the phone or doorbell rang. I don't like tales told by the past.

That being said, here we have chapters...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

8 comments

Sep 11, 2007

Katie rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

bookshelves: sciencefiction

Read in September, 2007

Like A Handmaid's Tale and mumble's Mumble Mumble Mumble*, Oryx and Crake is a dystopian novel exploring the post-apocalyptic future of sex and the human race by following a small number of characters very closely.

In this case, the main character appears to be the only member of homo sapiens left alive, and the sole caretaker of a new human-like species, the Children of Crake, genetically re-engineered to be peaceful, happy, naturally insect-repellant vegans perfectly suited to the...more Like A Handmaid's Tale and mumble's Mumble Mumble Mumble*, Oryx and Crake is a dystopian novel exploring the post-apocalyptic future of sex and the human race by following a small number of characters very closely.

In this case, the main character appears to be the only member of homo sapiens left alive, and the sole caretaker of a new human-like species, the Children of Crake, genetically re-engineered to be peaceful, happy, naturally insect-repellant vegans perfectly suited to their environment. The book focuses on the main character's life, from childhood, through his friendship with the aforementioned Crake and later with Oryx, eventually building up to the catastrophe that left him the last man on earth, victim and friend of a genius and a madman.

The first 2/3 of the book or so goes very quickly -- she starts you off at 90% of the way through the story, and the foreshadowing and sense of pacing Atwood employs as she backfills all the details make for highly motivated reading. Once the backstory is resolved however, she dumps the main character at the beginning of a brand new plot element and gives up. Feel free to stop reading after the Children of Crake try to fix his foot -- the remaining pages of the book add nothing, and you'll be less frustrated than you will be when you turn the page and see "About the Author" instead of a proper ending.

* Okay, so I read a book after taking Rob's History of Sci-Fi half-course, that I thought was by Atwood but turns out it wasn't, and damned if I can't remember the title or the author. A human anthropologist visits another planet, where the native humanoids are sexless except when in estrus. During this period they can take either form -- meaning that someone with two kids could have been the father of one and the mother of the other. At a monastery, they have developed a way to form a group of individuals into a sort of oracle, where one of the roles in the group must be filled by someone with a disorder leaving them constantly in estrus. The culture is otherwise analogous to Earth humans of the late 20th century, and the story is character-focused. It's not post-apocalyptic, but it's definitely melancholy and certainly saying something about how ridiculous human sex is.(less)

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

5 comments

May 19, 2007

Aerin rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

bookshelves: apocalyptic, favorites

Read in January, 2005

One of the (many) things that has always struck me as ridiculous about the concept of ~~creationism~~ - sorry, sorry, "intelligent design" - is the idea that an infinitely kind and intelligent god designed human beings, and yet this is the best he could do. Give me some ultimate power, and I could design a better species. One not so prone to runny noses and cancer, for starters. One where the trachea and esophagus don't share an opening - that might cut down on that pesky "choking...more

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Aug 02, 2007

mim rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

Read in January, 2005

Margaret Atwood began scaring me with Handmaiden's Tale. I thought it wouldn't happen again, but it did. This book was frighting

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Aug 14, 2008

Bonnie added it (review of isbn 0385721676)

bookshelves: canadian-author, reviewed-books, science-fiction

Read in June, 2005

I am sure it is well-written, but I simply could not get into it. Not my style...

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

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Oct 22, 2007

R. rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

bookshelves: 2007

1. The novelization of Talking Heads' Fear of Music.

2. Not a little of Neil Patrick Harris circa Starship Troopers in Crake.

3. He'd been unhappy too, of course. It went without saying, his unhappiness. He'd put a lot of energy into it. (pgs. 71-72)

4. Docked a WHOLE STAR for that vague-ass ending. Up to that point, that last page, it was a five star read.

5. Sadly, Alex the parrot died in Sept. 2007: Alex died quickly. He had a sudden, unexpe...more

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6 comments

May 14, 2008

Lori rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

I thought I had read this before, but I hadn't really - I had skimmed it. Wasn't the right time - after my son was born in 96 I had been far too vulnerable and avoided all dystopian literature. It seems this year I am again ready as I'll ever be - The Road, then this!

This was even better than The Handmaid's Tale. Funny as hell yet dark and foreboding because this future has already started, not just scientifically but the path humans follow is utterly within our nature and more than...more

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8 comments

Sep 05, 2007

Elizabeth Fiting rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: dystopia fans

Not quite done yet, but holy hell this is an amazing book. Atwood has an amazing ability to drop in tiny, innocuous details that only reveal their sinister, destructive nature pages or chapters later. The world that she has created is the stuff of nightmares, made all the more frightening because it is only steps away from the world we live in today.

I'm audiobooking this one, and my only complaint is that Campbell Scott's delivery feels off about forty percent of the time. His portra...more

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Dec 17, 2008

Colin Miller rated it:

(review of isbn 0747562598)

Read in August, 2005

No other genre has ideas that blow me away by their sheer creativity and in their butchered execution than science fiction. Amid plot clichés, bad dialogue, monstrously superfluous text, made-up technology solutions, and the flat-out lack of effort sci-fi writers put in to a genre that should be the most innovative—sacrificing cohesiveness for whim, new territory for old innovation cum stale sci-fi law, relying on the fan base to simply buy everything—one subgenre has remained faithful to g...more No other genre has ideas that blow me away by their sheer creativity and in their butchered execution than science fiction. Amid plot clichés, bad dialogue, monstrously superfluous text, made-up technology solutions, and the flat-out lack of effort sci-fi writers put in to a genre that should be the most innovative—sacrificing cohesiveness for whim, new territory for old innovation cum stale sci-fi law, relying on the fan base to simply buy everything—one subgenre has remained faithful to good storytelling: dystopian fiction.

Margaret Atwood’s effort Oryx and Crake maintains that proud tradition.

Snowman is seemingly the last human on Earth, though he’s visited by human-like creatures called the Children of Crake. Snowman has flashbacks to when he was a boy, Jimmy, befriending another boy, most often referred to as Crake. Raised in rich corporate compounds, set apart from the poor and dangerous urban pleeblands, Crake excels in school and in fantasy computer games, but his genius later warps into mad geneticist, setting into motion the events that will alter the landscape of Earth. They initially meet Oryx via computer screen, where she is a child prostitute on a pornography website. Her eyes haunt Jimmy, but Crake brings her in many years later to be his personal assistant.

Oryx and Crake is set in the near future and is more of a play on what we have now going horridly wrong than fantastical technologies coming out of nowhere. The gap between rich and poor has grown even wider; animals are genetically created with multiple organs and human DNA; and the commoditization of human life has stretched to an extreme degree, even with sexuality. As a result, the book is easily tied to The Island of Doctor Moreau, Gulliver’s Travels and Brave New World. Oryx and Crake is also considered a sequel to Atwood’s previous dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (which I haven’t read, but am willing to do so now). Though the dialogue sometimes goes into the clunky sci-fi cliché and the devices can be heavy-handed, Oryx and Crake holds its own in a subgenre that could soon fall into the pitfalls of mainstream science fiction itself. Three stars.
(less)

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Oct 19, 2009

karen rated it:

(review of isbn 0770429351)

bookshelves: dysto-teque, littry-fiction, the-end

eh.

bore-x and crake. this is a very all right book. i was just unwowed by it. initially, i liked the pacing of the book, and the way the story was spooling out between the present and past, doling its secrets out in dribs and drabs. but the characters just seemed so flimsy, and i was ultimately left with more questions than explanations. and the cutesy futuristic products and consumer culture bits are best left in the hands of a george saunders, not the queen of the long pen. however...more

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Jun 19, 2009

Julie rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

Read in June, 2009

Revision, 6.26.09: Not that it's that important, but I have changed my rating to 3 stars. The more I thought about it . . . and I'm sure Margaret Atwood will survive the disappointment.

Not since Beloved have I read a book that was so well done but so depressing that I could hardly continue at many points. I thought of giving it 3 stars just because of the sheer misery of the story, but, of course, this is Margaret Atwood, and both the quality of the writing and the details of the sto...more

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Apr 11, 2008

Danika rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

Read in May, 2008

recommends it for: Sci-fi or Atwood fans

This book took me FOREVER to get through. Normally, I love Margaret Atwood, but I never really got into this book. It's post-apocalyptic and deals with issues around genetic modification. Interesting topic, and I wound up sticking with it until the end, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. Maybe it was just me as every one else seems to rate it pretty highly.

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Feb 24, 2009

Jennifer rated it:

(review of isbn 0385721676)

bookshelves: sf-and-fantasy-and-horror

Read in March, 2009

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I heard about this book from a book club that I've recently joined that focuses on post-apocalyptic fiction. Oryx and Crake definitely fits the theme. The only other book I've read by Margaret Atwood is The Handmaid's Tale. Oryx and Crake reminds me of this book only in what seems to be its purpose - commentary on the flaws of modern society.

The near future of this book is one where the US is split between privileged and hermetically sealed Compounds (with all of the worse excesse...more

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Feb 14, 2009

Rebecca rated it:

(review of isbn 0747562598)

Read in February, 2009

recommended to Rebecca by: Stephanie

I am calling complete, and total, bullshit.

There are so many things wrong with this book that it's hard to know where to begin. For starters, the idea of having a couple of different timelines going at once, and shift tenses according--present tense for the present, regular past tenses for the past--causes some serious grammatical problems, and is an utter BS plot device. I'm not a huge fan of telling a story through flashbacks, but it can be done reasonably while retaining proper g...more I am calling complete, and total, bullshit.

There are so many things wrong with this book that it's hard to know where to begin. For starters, the idea of having a couple of different timelines going at once, and shift tenses according--present tense for the present, regular past tenses for the past--causes some serious grammatical problems, and is an utter BS plot device. I'm not a huge fan of telling a story through flashbacks, but it can be done reasonably while retaining proper grammar. It's not brain surgery.

I admit that I went into this book predisposed not to like it, for a variety of reasons. I didn't like The Blind Assassin (yes, I might be the only person IN THE WORLD who can say that), but I thought that I should be fair and give an author another chance before I make up my mind. I also generally dislike dystopic literature, because it's so rarely done right. Her basic idea was kind of interesting (if done better in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, and even that had its problems), but the execution was fatally flawed. I don't know much about science, but I do know that some of the research was wrong and the timelines don't add up. She seemed like she researched just enough to be able to throw words around, but not enough to use them correctly--a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The biggest problem was the characters, though: three such utterly unsympathetic main characters do not make it easy to like anything about the story. Crake was a rabid dog that needed to be put down a lot sooner than he was, Oryx was probably insane and too cold to make you care, and Snowman was just too damn stupid. Also, characters that you meet while they're watching child porn to me means that they should be first in line for the electric chair, not that I should care about their personal problems.

The biggest problem I have with Atwood, though, is a problem that seems to be systemic in her works: she's so bloody arrogant. When you open one of her books, you're immediately hit in the face by a thought bubble: She is writing World Changing Literature, and you should grovel before her genius. You have to dig through layers of ego just to get to the plot. She has talent, no doubt, but she is so full of herself and her ability to be a Literary Writer that you miss the book forest for the literary trees.

Also-also, she probably thought that ending was clever, but it was, in fact, a cop out. She was bored with the book, she wanted to end it, so she did. It must be convenient to not have to actually tie up her loose ends.

In summary, I am clearly too much of a plebeian to appreciate the full extent of her genius, and I should crawl back to the benighted hole from whence I came.(less)

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