"The elimination of one generation means game over forever.", 5 Sep 2003

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews

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

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