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Oryx and Crake
(MaddAddam #1)
by
Listening Length: 10 hours and 29 minutes
The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pl ...more
The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pl ...more
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Audible Audio, Unabridged, 11 pages
Published
May 9th 2003
by Random House Audio
(first published April 22nd 2003)
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Start your review of Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam Trilogy, #1)
So, you go to Wal-Mart to buy your groceries because it's so damn cheap, but then you realize Wal-Mart is hiring very few full-time employees and not offering reasonable health care to its employees and it's walking employees through the process of how to get Medicare, not to mention they're closing down small businesses by exploiting foreign economies to get the lowest possible fucking cost; so, Wal-Mart's making YOU pay medical benefits for ITS employees, and replacing good jobs with shitty on
...more
Dec 07, 2009
Tatiana
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
everyone
Recommended to Tatiana by:
Gypsy Ryan, Misty
I wonder if all Margaret Atwoods books are like this one? Having read "Oryx and Crake" and "The Handmaid's Tale," I am curious now how many other ways of horrifying me she has up her sleeve.
"Oryx and Crake" is a dystopian (or as Atwood calls it herself, a speculative fiction) novel set in a future where genetic engineering rules the world. The story is told from the POV of Snowman, a seemingly last Homo sapiens sapiens on Earth. He is surrounded by the new breed of humans - passive, docile Chil ...more
"Oryx and Crake" is a dystopian (or as Atwood calls it herself, a speculative fiction) novel set in a future where genetic engineering rules the world. The story is told from the POV of Snowman, a seemingly last Homo sapiens sapiens on Earth. He is surrounded by the new breed of humans - passive, docile Chil ...more
Oct 01, 2008
Lindsay
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
diehard Atwood fans
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Sometimes I'm torn between wishing I could get a glimpse inside Atwood's mind and thinking that might be absolutely terrifying.
...more
Oryx and Crake is an exceptionally weird novel that left me baffled, stunned and even disgusted; however, as time went on, it developed into one of the cleverest pieces of fiction I have ever read.
Behind the child pornography, ritualistic killings and animal abuse two young teens relished watching in their spare time on the internet, resided a dormant drive to understanding the excesses of human behaviour in order to dominate it. One of the boys (Crake) is phased by nothing; he is cold, calcula ...more
Behind the child pornography, ritualistic killings and animal abuse two young teens relished watching in their spare time on the internet, resided a dormant drive to understanding the excesses of human behaviour in order to dominate it. One of the boys (Crake) is phased by nothing; he is cold, calcula ...more
One Generation Away
I find it difficult to tell whether Atwood’s dystopian fantasies are meant as constructive social criticism or as sarcastic prophecy. Recent headlines suggest that her prophetic skills dominate, and with them her anticipatory sarcasm.
In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the MeToo movement, for example, the British actress Joanna Lumley is reported to be fervently hoping that “not all men are bad” [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainm...]. As Spencer Tracey said in ...more
I find it difficult to tell whether Atwood’s dystopian fantasies are meant as constructive social criticism or as sarcastic prophecy. Recent headlines suggest that her prophetic skills dominate, and with them her anticipatory sarcasm.
In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the MeToo movement, for example, the British actress Joanna Lumley is reported to be fervently hoping that “not all men are bad” [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainm...]. As Spencer Tracey said in ...more
I had read Year of the Flood not realizing that it was a sequel to Oryx and Crake. Thus a desire to see what else was in store in this post-apocalyptic vision. Atwood portrays a world in which short-sightedness causes a major, global collapse in civilization. We travel with a few characters through the transition from bad to unimaginable and see what might happen if we continue along some of the paths we now trod. Genetic engineering is at the core here, and along with it flows a consideration ...more
How can someone make up such a fascinating and terrifying story? Wow.... I absolutely loved it. It took me some time to take this book from my book shelves, it was there already some time, it seemed a bit weird, but after having read the Handmaid's Tale, I took up the challenge and it was well, well worthed. An apocalyptic story about a guy who seems to have remained as the sole human alive after an epidemic catastrophy leading to mankind going down. Together with the weird Crake's children he s
...more
Feb 14, 2009
Rebecca
rated it
did not like it
·
review of another edition
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 grammar. It's ...more
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 ...more
What a fantastic dystopia awaits! Our post-apocalyptic fate will surely be a wonder to behold. Atwood BUILDS UP when any other 'sensible' writer writing today about the doomed future would simply TEAR DOWN. In this compulsively-readable novel, the fabulous formula borrows some ingredients from such classic books as "The Island of Dr. Moreau"& "Jurassic Park"; "The Road" and "Never Let Me Go*" derive from the same line of thought as it! It's basically SUPERIOR to all of those books (save, maybe,
...more
Most Recent Reading (3/6/2020)
Again, absolutely amazing! And I loved it even more after reading The Year of the Flood!
Even though Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake was absolutely amazing, it took me a few readings before I was ready to review it. Like many of her other novels, Atwood presents events leading up to her dystopian future with a cold logic. How the characters participate in these events as well as the world of the 'crakers' (which comes after humanity) makes this story truly memorable ...more
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 - and this ...more
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 - and this ...more
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
and Jimmy feels fine.
Jimmy feels fine.
Actually, wait. That's not true. It's the end of the world, and Jimmy's the last human standing and he feels. . . he feels. . . well, Jimmy feels like shit.
He's wrapped in a bed sheet, he's filthy, he's hungry, and he's alone, with nothing but his worries, his regrets and some strange non-humans, known as Crakers, to keep him company.
And why ...more
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
and Jimmy feels fine.
Jimmy feels fine.
Actually, wait. That's not true. It's the end of the world, and Jimmy's the last human standing and he feels. . . he feels. . . well, Jimmy feels like shit.
He's wrapped in a bed sheet, he's filthy, he's hungry, and he's alone, with nothing but his worries, his regrets and some strange non-humans, known as Crakers, to keep him company.
And why ...more
Mar 28, 2012
Manny
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
People who like dystopias
Recommended to Manny by:
Jordan
Snowman has spent a terrible night, full of confused, whiskey-sodden dreams, and when the Children of Crake call to him from the bottom of his tree he is still mostly asleep.
"You don't exist!" he shouts. "You're not even characters in a Margaret Atwood novel! You're just part of a review. And Manny won't write it until Jordan's finished the book as well."
None of this makes sense to Snowman, and it makes even less sense to the Children of Crake.
"What is a novel?" asks Eleanor Roosevelt.
"And who ...more
"You don't exist!" he shouts. "You're not even characters in a Margaret Atwood novel! You're just part of a review. And Manny won't write it until Jordan's finished the book as well."
None of this makes sense to Snowman, and it makes even less sense to the Children of Crake.
"What is a novel?" asks Eleanor Roosevelt.
"And who ...more
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 where genetic engineering w ...more
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 where genetic engineering w ...more
Margaret Atwood once reported that, when she was a child, many discussions at the dinner table revolved around climate warming, extinction of species, and other similar topics that are nowadays on the front cover of magazines. Oryx and Crake, in the same vein as The Handmaid's Tale, is a novel that speculates about the near future of humanity.
What if social disparities were no longer fought against but admitted and institutionalised as a form of urbanism, such as fancy gated communities, next to ...more
What if social disparities were no longer fought against but admitted and institutionalised as a form of urbanism, such as fancy gated communities, next to ...more
Jun 22, 2010
Jennifer (aka EM)
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
maple-flavoured
I'm coming back to the authors who marked my literary 'coming of age': Vonnegut, Atwood. These two, for me, are the grand-daddy and grand-mammy of my bookish adolescence. They were life rafts held out by a couple of high school teachers. I grabbed them and held on. I simply cannot review either properly, so wrapped in nostalgia is my own point of view; so personal my reaction. I'm reading them now to see how they hold up and what they have to say to me 30 years later; and in Atwood's case, to pi
...more
Nov 16, 2016
Joe Valdez
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
sci-fi-apocalyptic
My introduction to Margaret Atwood is Oryx and Crake, her 2003 science fiction novel that leaps from the post-apocalypse back to the months leading up to it. This is a future that owes its legacy to Philip K. Dick, where ecological disaster and civil unrest are kept outside the compound walls of the biotech industry, whose engineers toil on some troubling new creations. The novel is lesiurely paced and droll but kept me engrossed via the sharpness of its wit and a creeping dread that builds unde
...more
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake is a novel by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. She has described the novel as speculative fiction and "adventure romance" rather than science fiction because it does not deal with things "we can't yet do or begin to do" and goes beyond the realism she associates with the novel form. The novel focuses on a post-apocalyptic character with the name of Snowman, living near a group of primitive human-like creatures whom he calls Crakers. Flashbacks re ...more
Oryx and Crake is a novel by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. She has described the novel as speculative fiction and "adventure romance" rather than science fiction because it does not deal with things "we can't yet do or begin to do" and goes beyond the realism she associates with the novel form. The novel focuses on a post-apocalyptic character with the name of Snowman, living near a group of primitive human-like creatures whom he calls Crakers. Flashbacks re ...more
Wow, if you thought the world of Handmaid’s Tale was a stark utopia, it is an almost happy ending compared to Snowman’s world in Oryx and Crake.
Talk about timing.
Just as the weather goes nuts – sunscreen and shorts one day, parkas the next – and mysterious diseases warrant masks, along comes Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake, a novel that explains these and other global warning signs.
This is Atwood's second successful work of speculative fiction. But where The Handmaid's Tale focused on gender and reproduction in a totalitarian regime, Oryx And Crake examines genetic splicing and disease.
We begin in a post-apocalyptic world, barren and s ...more
Just as the weather goes nuts – sunscreen and shorts one day, parkas the next – and mysterious diseases warrant masks, along comes Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake, a novel that explains these and other global warning signs.
This is Atwood's second successful work of speculative fiction. But where The Handmaid's Tale focused on gender and reproduction in a totalitarian regime, Oryx And Crake examines genetic splicing and disease.
We begin in a post-apocalyptic world, barren and s ...more
Jun 24, 2014
Lisa
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
favorites,
margaret-atwood
"Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?"
I read a book on the future (a nonfiction on the future, that is a bit of an oxymoron, I know!) about the fourth industrial revolution last week, and going through the list of paradigm shifts that are taking place at this very moment in time, I felt increasingly uncomfortable. "I know this already", I thought. "And I know where it is going to lead."
Almost by instinct, I took Ory ...more
I read a book on the future (a nonfiction on the future, that is a bit of an oxymoron, I know!) about the fourth industrial revolution last week, and going through the list of paradigm shifts that are taking place at this very moment in time, I felt increasingly uncomfortable. "I know this already", I thought. "And I know where it is going to lead."
Almost by instinct, I took Ory ...more
I wanted to give myself three months to reflect on this book before writing anything about it. I have a tendency, upon finishing a novel that I really, really love, to annoy the shit out of friends and loved ones by first trying to impress upon them the need to read this book now, NOW - and failing that, to wax hyperbolic and ecstatic over its charms. To them I am the litboy who cried wolf.
And yes, it has only been two months, not three, but I've read the other two books in the MaddAddam series ...more
Margaret Atwood deserves all the admiration and praise that she receives, and then some. Such a clever and erudite woman can only make the world a better place. And she does this by showing the horrors of what could easily become our reality.
Oryx and Crake is a post-apocalyptic novel about Snowman, a lone survivor of a nightmare future. Snowman represents all the dirtiness of the human-collective. He is us. He carries shame and regret and a willingness to cling to hope.
The revelations are slow ...more
Oryx and Crake is a post-apocalyptic novel about Snowman, a lone survivor of a nightmare future. Snowman represents all the dirtiness of the human-collective. He is us. He carries shame and regret and a willingness to cling to hope.
The revelations are slow ...more
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 pat
...more
I started this book knowing that this is a post-apocalyptic novel. I knew that Snowman had survived some sort of mass destruction of mankind because of an experiment gone awry and is fighting for survival. The story started with Snowman sleeping in a tree, waking up in a survival mode, with the last of his provisions. He then observes the children at a distance, obviously not surprised or afraid of them. They knew him as they approached him and chanted his name, “Snowman, oh Snowman.” Who are th
...more
The blurb says Oryx and Crake is a love story. I must be missing something!There's nothing really romantic about this story, it's a novel that questions society's ethics and morals. Dystopian novels always make me feel a bit paranoid, this one more so because we actually have the technologies Atwood described in the book, and genetic experimentation is always a hotly-debated topic. How far are we willing to go, and what will the repercussions be?
This book was very entertaining, and a quick read. ...more
This book was very entertaining, and a quick read. ...more
Futuristic, bad new world in the wake of an unspecified environmental/ genetic engineering disaster, told from the viewpoint of a nostalgic but detached survivor. It is as much about personal relationships, sexual exploitation, sexual freedom, religion, creation and original sin as it is cyber-punk sci-fi. The central, though unoriginal, irony is that this dystopia was created from a failed Utopian plan.
Trilogy
O&C is parallel with the equally excellent "The Year of the Flood" (reviewed here: ht ...more
Trilogy
O&C is parallel with the equally excellent "The Year of the Flood" (reviewed here: ht ...more
Mar 01, 2018
Barry Pierce
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
read-in-2018,
21st-century
I've somewhat skipped ahead in my reading of Maggie Atwood. I was going in order from the beginning but then I saw this in a charity shop for like a euro and obviously couldn't leave it behind.
I've never been a fan of non-realist works of fiction. Hence science fiction doesn't brandish my shelves and you'd actually have to pay me to read fantasy. So I was apprehensive about Oryx and Crake, the first book in Maggie's trilogy of post-apocalyptic speculative works.
The novel begins with Snowman waki ...more
I've never been a fan of non-realist works of fiction. Hence science fiction doesn't brandish my shelves and you'd actually have to pay me to read fantasy. So I was apprehensive about Oryx and Crake, the first book in Maggie's trilogy of post-apocalyptic speculative works.
The novel begins with Snowman waki ...more
Dec 21, 2015
Stuart
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
favorites,
globalization,
dystopian,
near-future,
humanistic-sf,
literature,
post-apocalyptic
A scathing condemnation of the world we are creating
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Oryx and Crake hit me a lot harder than I expected. It’s Margaret Atwood, so you can expect the deft characterizations, innovative narrative structure, effortless writing, and social criticism. What I wasn’t prepared for was the powerful emotional impact it had, and the thoughts it generated. In essence, Atwood asks a simple question: “What type of world are we creating, and does it deserve to exist? Moreo ...more
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Oryx and Crake hit me a lot harder than I expected. It’s Margaret Atwood, so you can expect the deft characterizations, innovative narrative structure, effortless writing, and social criticism. What I wasn’t prepared for was the powerful emotional impact it had, and the thoughts it generated. In essence, Atwood asks a simple question: “What type of world are we creating, and does it deserve to exist? Moreo ...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| You'll love this ...: January 2016 - Oryx and Crake | 55 | 105 | Oct 05, 2019 07:40AM | |
| The Rory Gilmore ...: Oryx and Crake | 20 | 122 | Jan 16, 2019 07:53PM | |
| Play Book Tag: Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1) – Margaret Atwood - 2 stars | 11 | 42 | Nov 27, 2018 01:55PM | |
| Around the World ...: Book #12 - Oryx and Crake - Atwood - Canada | 3 | 3 | Oct 25, 2018 09:04AM |
Readers also enjoyed
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, childr ...more
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, childr ...more
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