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Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam Trilogy, Book 1)
By the author of THE HANDMAID'S TALE and ALIAS GRACE 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,…
- Release Date
- 2009
- Length
- 229 pages
- Publisher
- Hachette UK
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Our Review
About the book
In a ravaged future, a man called Snowman survives among gentle, engineered humanoids and recalls how the world fell apart. His memories center on his brilliant friend Crake and the mysterious Oryx, both bound up in the catastrophe.
Our review
Atwood’s bleakly funny vision of biotech gone wrong reads less like prophecy every year and more like reportage.
Oryx and Crake works on two timelines: Snowman scraping by in a wasteland, and his memories of growing up in corporate compounds where gene-spliced animals and sinister pharmaceuticals were routine. Atwood’s satire of consumer science is grimly hilarious, from the brand names to the hybrid creatures, and her vision of a society that sorts people into the useful and the disposable is chilling.
Snowman, once Jimmy, is a passive, self-pitying narrator, which is intentional but sometimes wearing. The novel withholds its central events for a long time, so the structure can feel teasing until the threads converge. Oryx herself remains elusive, which some readers will find thematically pointed and others frustrating. Even so, the ideas linger long after the final page, and the book reads as a strong opening to the MaddAddam trilogy.
What we loved
- Biting satire of corporate science and branding
- Two timelines that slowly reveal the collapse
- Inventive, unsettling engineered creatures
Keep in mind
- Jimmy is a deliberately unappealing narrator
- Oryx is underdeveloped as a character, perhaps by design
Read it if you like
Readers who admired The Handmaid’s Tale or Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and want speculative fiction with sharp teeth.
The verdict
A disturbing, darkly comic speculative novel whose warnings about science and profit feel more urgent with time.
