Oryx and Crake (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

This is a book that grabs your attention from the very first sentence and never lets go, dragging you further and further into the nightmare world of an all to possible near future. Who is the Snowman? Why is he alone? Who/what are the Children of Crake? The answers Atwood reveals slowly, as she describes a world not unlike our own - apart from the pigoons, wolvogs and rakunks and the fact that the midday sun can burn the skin from your back. The geological world has changed but the human world certainly hasn't. If anything, it's got worse. Technologies such as the Internet, GM food and genetic engineering are taken to their logical and depressing conclusions. Anyone familiar with 'Transmetropolitan' won't be surprised by the themes explored.

In terms of 'lone survivor in a hostile environment' genre, 'Oryx & Crake' shares similarities with 'I Am Legend' - Snowman (short for Abominable Snowman), sees himself as a creature of myth; the last human left alive. But unlike Matheson's book, the explicit reasons for the final catastrophe are revealed in a horrifying climax, the causes of which are slowly hinted at as the story unfolds through Snowman's memories.

Atwood's skill lies in taking what is merely theory now and having it treated as commonplace by her characters. The horror of the book lies in the fact that it could happen. In some instances events have already overtaken fiction and the seeds of our (possible), destruction have already been sown.

Not a preachy, or po-faced book by any means (there's a surprising amount of humour) but certainly one that makes you stop and think, with characters and events that will haunt you long after the final page. Thoroughly recommended.

Snowman (known as Jimmy in his youth) is the lone survivor, a man on the verge of starvation in this desolate new world, now living in a tree for protection against "wolvogs" (part dog, part wolf) and serving as the protector of a bioengineered strain of humanoid children. As Atwood alternates between the unexplained disaster in which Snowman finds himself at the outset of the novel and flashbacks to his youth and early adulthood, which he shared with his best friend Crake, she brings a dismal future-world to life.

We never see Jimmy/Snowman engaging in the kind of personal conflict which would have led to such a grand-scale disaster, nor do we ever really experience the intense reader involvement which might have developed from observing such a conflict. Most of the real conflict, in fact, takes place in the past and is revealed only in flashbacks. Snowman’s primary conflict is his final, lonely battle with the environment to stay alive, something which advances an environmental message at the expense of dramatic tension. Characters also are subordinated to message. We know only as much about Jimmy/Snowman as we need to know in order to empathize with him in his predicament as possibly the last man on earth. The other characters are remote and distanced.

Despite its grim subject and cautionary message, the novel has a great deal of humor. With trenchant satire, Atwood pokes fun at aspects of our contemporary lives carried to extremes. Not hard science fiction, the novel is a vividly described picture of scientists run amok in a society which has failed in its guardianship of the environment and of life itself. The novel is more light-hearted than terrifying, and more allegorical than heart-stopping. Mary Whipple