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I had heard this book talked about, but something about it just turned my head the other way. But I found a copy at MediaPlay in the remainder section. I picked it up and started to read the synopsis on the dust jacket.
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As the story opens, the narrator, who calls himself Snowman, is sleeping in a tree, wearing a dirty old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beautiful and beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, while slowly starving to death.
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It may seem strange, but that hooked me. It was haunting. I wanted to find out about Snowman and just how much Oryx and Crake meant to him. (By the way, Snowman does not narrate the book …….. it is in third person.)
Even though this is classified as sci-fi (as was “The Handmaid’s Tale”), it is not strong on sci-fi. Atwood herself is not a sci-fi writer. But there are social issues that she brings up in these books, and by basing them in a future society, it makes it easier to bring forth.
What happens in “Oryx and Crake” is that Snowman (who’s real name is Jimmy) fears that he is the only human left on Earth. There has been a disease that has possibly wiped out humankind in the not too distant future. But there is also a very small race of humanoid beings that he is acting as sheppard to. Jimmy has many flashbacks (like 60% to 70% of the book is flashbacks) about his mother and father, the day he met Crake (who’s real name is Glenn) in high school, how they became such good friends, the story behind Oryx, a former child prostitute/pornographic actor from Southeast Asia, and the story behind this humanoid race.
It is not your typical “end of the world/apocolypse” sci-fi story. There is a lot of meat in what Jimmy goes through in his life. And there are some surprises to how the world got the way it did, and how Oryx and Crake die. It was a very worthwhile read, and I am glad I picked it up.
8/10
