Title :               Oryx and Crake

Author:            Margaret Atwood

Publisher:        Anchor Books

                        www.anchorbooks.com

ISBN:              0-385-72167-6

Margaret Atwood’s apocalyptic novel is a dystopia about a poor man Jimmie, otherwise known as Snowman, whose one best friend in life, Crake, is a utopian genetic-engineering genius that decides to create a new race of people, Crakers.

The charm of the novel is in Margaret Atwood’s tongue-in-cheek and amusing enhancements to the world, all products of genetic engineering. The plot plods along following Jimmie sitting in his sheet telling about Crake, his father, mother, and his lover Oryx. We learn a lot about life in this new world, one that isn’t as remote as one might wish, through Jimmie’s tales. The actual apocalypse when it comes evokes no emotion from either Jimmie or the reader because by this time, humanity has been so dehumanized that we don’t care.

It is a chilling tale and like all dystopias has some utopian aspects. Crake eliminates most of the people in the world to make way for a perfected people, all beautiful, in all shades of color. They are freed from sexual politics because desire for women is satisfied by multiple lovers and a body able to sport for long enough to get pregnant. Men are likewise freed from sexual politics because they only desire long enough to get chosen or not. As people, they need no foods because they prefer vegetable matter and recycle their own body waste endlessly. They also grow up quickly, but appear to be less intelligent than Crake, i.e. haven’t learned enough to create a utopian world.

The sad part about Jimmie is he has no redeeming value. The reader is likely to feel disgusted by him, almost as if he is a Neanderthal, some primitive being that came before the Crakers, a much evolved species. His one redeeming skill seems to be the art of creating the mythology about how the Crakers came into being. Jimmie tries to be careful in what he tells the Crakers but he makes mistakes.

Jimmie eventual has to get supplies and something happens in the story, but the reader never worries about him, he serves no function except as story teller. We don’t even wonder about Crake’s motives, which we eventually learn. We do learn about Oryx but she is more figment of imagination, part lover, part mother, part love, and when she becomes the future mother figure in Jimmie’s creation mythology for the Crakers she is the most real despite a past the looks like Geisha.

Like most apocalyptic novels, this one serves as a warning about dehumanizing humans and the scary potential to create that comes with genetic engineering. I enjoyed the the author’s sense of humor; and felt it carries the reader through to the end.