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Showing 1-5 of 379 (next | show all)

Although there were spots of brilliance in this book, I found it mostly boring and hard to continue listening to. The naming of things and people was odd, not really in sync with each other -- for instance, New New York when other cities had their normal known names. Contrived, and to what end? The very general premise of the story was fine and perhaps plausible. Nothing about this book grabbed me. Oryx, a female character, seemed more like a mist than a person; she was strangely inhuman. She was supposed to be human. The Crakers were fun, interesting, but not believable, to me. Crake seemed like the most realistic character.

Throughout the book, the reader was told Snowman was the only human left on earth. Even in apocalyptic situations, there's no way to know such a thing, so it rang shallow and dramatic. The story vascillated between present(future really) and past, pre- and post-apocalypse, if you will -- before and after a massive plague. I did like the ending -- it left room for a sequel, assuming the original was any good, and I wouldn't read a sequel. The story could make an interesting movie as there is plenty of fodder for visual effects. (

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Rascalstar | Jan 21, 2017 |

cottageusedbooks | Jan 14, 2017 |

My review at:

http://danyspike.booklikes.com/post/908167/oryx-and-crake-maddaddam-1-margaret-a...
(

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Danyspike | Jan 14, 2017 |

A dystopic fantasy, very well written but leaves me with the one big question: what's the bl..dy point? The characters lack the psychological depth of their counterparts in Atwoods short stories, which is real pity. The relation between Jimmy, Crake and Oryx is rather superficial. As in all fantasies there is a lot of explaining going on to introduce a world different from our own, which is not paricularly exciting. Suspense, on the whole, is scarce. (

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stef7sa | Jan 5, 2017 |

I was honestly surprised how easily I was pulled into this story.I could not get enough of it and listened to it wherever I went, finding myself listening for even one minute at a time doing around the house chores.

This is really a shocking story that is going to make you think about how things are and how they could be. I ended up reflecting a lot on what I read and how it made me feel for the future, both for myself and for the world. The scariest thing about this story wasn't what was happening, it was how believable everything was. A reader would have no trouble at all thinking about what is being said and realizing the things going on in the book could easily start happening here and now on any given day.

Science fiction fans should enjoy it, fans of dystopian stories should enjoy it, and even newcomers to these genres might just get so caught up in the book they find a new type of book to read. I will certainly be finishing the series. (

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mirrani | Dec 27, 2016 |

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Oryx and Crake is a piece of dystopian fiction written from the point of Snowman (known as Jimmy in his former life) – the last human left on Earth. At least, he believes he’s the last human left on Earth until the end of the book.

I found the parts of the book describing Snowman’s journey to Paradice (the dome in the compound where Crake did his work) to be a lot less interesting than his recollections of his previous life as Jimmy. I loved reading about how Jimmy and Crake met, the little signs that Crake gave off as to what he might be planning and the direction his thoughts might take in the future (though Jimmy didn’t recognize these until it was too late), etc.

Crake is really the star of the show in this book in my mind – Jimmy simply acts as a vessel for us to learn about a character who is dead and who therefore cannot teach us about himself.

Snowman’s adventures in real time seem almost pointless to me. Why not dedicate the whole book to Jimmy’s friendship with Crake, with just a bit of general explanation as to what’s going on now? I think the present would have been much more interesting if the Crakers were explored more than Jimmy’s struggle to survive and come to grips with what Crake had done.

On the whole, however, I thought it was a great book.

added by spectralbat | editLiza Shulyayeva, Liza Shulyayeva (Feb 10, 2011)

Set sometime in the future, this post-apocalyptic novel takes scientific research in the hands of madmen to its logical and frightening conclusion. Inspiring readers to pay more attention to the world around them, Atwood offers cautionary notes about the environment, bioengineering, the sacrifice of civil liberties, and the possible loss of those human values which make life more than just a physical experience. As the novel opens, some catastrophe has occurred, effectively wiping out human life. Only one lonely survivor and a handful of genetically altered humanoids remain, and they are slowly starving as they try to adjust to their changed circumstances.

added by stephmo | editMostly Fiction, Mary Whipple (May 28, 2004)

In Margaret Atwood's first attempt at writing a novel, the main character was an ant swept downriver on a raft. She abandoned that book after the opening scene and became caught up in other activities, which she has described as ''sissy stuff like knitting and dresses and stuffed bunnies.'' That certainly does not sound like Ms. Atwood, who is known for the boldness of her fiction. Of course she was only 7 at the time.

added by stephmo | editNew York Times, Mel Gussow (Jun 24, 2003)

Margaret Atwood has always taken a jaundiced view of human nature. Back when her mordant observations about marriage and other relations between the sexes had her marked down as a feminist, she took pains to fire off several novels in a row featuring weak, manipulative, dishonest and outright bad women, partly to prove that her skepticism was distributed fairly. She has always been of the opinion that people are a mixed bag of the occasionally decent and the frequently mendacious and that there's not much anyone can do to change that fact.

added by stephmo | editSalon.com, Laura Miller (May 27, 2003)

Genetic tinkering. Rampant profiteering. A deadly virus that sweeps the globe. Are these last Tuesday's headlines or our future?

In Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake, the answer is both. For Atwood, our future is the catastrophic sum of our oversights. It's a depressing view, saved only by Atwood's biting, black humor and absorbing storytelling.

added by stephmo | editUSA Today, Jackie Pray (May 26, 2003)

he novelist Margaret Atwood has wandered off from us before: once, in 1986, to the mid-twenty-first century, for a feminist dystopia, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in which women are enslaved according to their reproductive usefulness; another time, in 1996, to the nineteenth century, to make thrifty use of her graduate work at Radcliffe in the faux-Victorian novel “Alias Grace.” These were forays and raids. In her chronicling of contemporary sexual manners and politics, Atwood has always been interested in pilfering popular forms—comic books, gothic tales, detective novels, science fiction—in order to make them do her more literary bidding. Her previous novel, “The Blind Assassin,” is the best example of the kind of narrative pastiche at which she excels.

added by stephmo | editThe New Yorker, Lorrie Moore (May 19, 2003)

I AM going to stick my neck out and just say it: science fiction will never be Literature with a capital ''L,'' and this is because it inevitably proceeds from premise rather than character. It sacrifices moral and psychological nuance in favor of more conceptual matters, and elevates scenario over sensibility. Some will ask, of course, whether there still is such a thing as ''Literature with a capital 'L.' '' I proceed on the faith that there is. Are there exceptions to my categorical pronouncement? Probably, but I don't think enough of them to overturn it.

added by stephmo | editNew York Times, Sven Birkerts (May 18, 2003)

With her latest novel, ''Oryx and Crake,'' Margaret Atwood takes us back to the future, much the way she did in her 1986 novel ''The Handmaid's Tale.'' Once again she conjures up a dystopia, where trends that started way back in the 20th century have metastasized into deeply sinister phenomena. Once again she has tried to write a cautionary tale about the hypothetical consequences of our current appetites and obsessions. And once again she has produced a lumpy hodge-podge of a book: a novel that's didactic, at times intriguing but in the end thoroughly unpersuasive.

added by stephmo | editNew York Times, Michiko Kakutani (May 13, 2003)

The end of the world would be bad, of course, but books about it are a disaster. Once in a while an author carries off the Apocalypse with some pizazz - St. John comes to mind - but even the best writers have trouble with it. Three years ago, T.C. Boyle brought things to a dismal close in "Friend of the Earth." And now Booker Prize-winner Margaret Atwood is thundering away in "Oryx and Crake."

added by stephmo | editChristian Science Monitor, Ron Charles (May 8, 2003)

Arguably the shortest of all short stories, the late science-fiction writer Fredric Brown's "Knock" reads, in its entirety: "The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door." Or, to put it another way, "One day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand." Whether in Brown's distilled version or in Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," this scene always tells the same story: A man thinks himself alone, then discovers otherwise.

added by stephmo | editSan Francisco Chronicle, David Kippen (Apr 17, 2003)

Environmental unconcern, genetic engineering, and bioterrorism have created the hollowed-out, haunted future world of Atwood’s ingenious and disturbing 11th novel, bearing several resemblances to The Handmaid’s Tale

added by sturlington | editKirkus Reviews (Mar 15, 2003)

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▾Other authors

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Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Margaret Atwood	—	primary author	all editions	calculated
Chancer, John	Narrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Davids, Tinke	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Drews, Kristiina	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Scott, Campbell	Narrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

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The MaddAddam Trilogy: Oryx & Crake; The Year of the Flood; Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood

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MaddAddam Trilogy (1)

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Oryx and Crake

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New York, New York, USA

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Awards and honors

Orange Prize Shortlist (2004)

Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlist (2003)

Booker Prize Shortlist (2003)

Governor General's Literary Award Finalist (Fiction, 2003)

Canada Reads Nominee (2005)

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Epigraph

I could perhaps like others have astonished you
with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matters of fact in the simplest manner and style; because my principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse you.
- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower in the air?
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Dedication

For my family

First words

Snowman wakes before dawn.

Quotations

If he wants to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before him have made the same life choice.

Crake had worked for years on the purring. Once he'd discovered that the cat family purred at the same frequency as the ultrasound used on bone fractures and skin lesions and were thus equipped with their own self-healing mechanism, he'd turned himself inside out in the attempt to install the feature.

So Crake never remembered his dreams. It's Snowman that remembers them instead. Worse than remembers: he's immersed in them, he's wading through them, he's stuck in them. Every moment he's lived in the past few months was dreamed first by Crake. No wonder Crake screamed so much.

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Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0385721676, Paperback)

In Oryx and Crake, 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 humor. --Mark Frutkin, Amazon.ca

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:04:58 -0400)

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▾Library descriptions

With the same stunning blend of prophecy and social satire she brought to her classic The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood gives us a keenly prescient novel about the future of humanity-and its present. Humanity here equals Snowman, and in Snowman's recollections Atwood re-creates a time much like our own, when a boy named Jimmy loved an elusive, damaged girl called Oryx and a sardonic genius called Crake. But now Snowman is alone, and as we learn why we also learn about a world that could become ours one day. "Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey--with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake--through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining."--Back cover.… (more)

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