Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood, Doubleday, 2003, 367 pages.
Acclaimed Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood is a wonderful writer. Her 11th novel, "Oryx and Crake," is as as unusual as the title suggests, but in it Atwood weaves a very compelling story of the future more similar to "The Handmaid's Tale" than her recent novels, "Alias Grace" (1996) and "The Blind Assassin" (2002).
Though it is easy to label "Oryx and Crake" science fiction, Atwood claims it to be speculative fiction. Why? It does take place sometime in the future after a catastrophic event. Because, says Atwood, in an interview on the book's Web site, "it contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians." Also it does not invent anything that has not been invented or started to be invented. Perhaps another genre would be contemplative fiction, for "Oryx and Crake" above all makes you think about what we are doing and what will happen if we continue on the same path.
The story begins with Snowman, a sole survivor (he thinks) of some worldwide catastrophe, which the reader learns about at the end of the novel. He lives in a tree to escape wild animals. Clad in a dirty old bedsheet, he is in charge of a group of benign creatures called Crakers, because his friend, the genius Crake, invented them.
As Snowman tells his story, he goes back to his youth spent in a Compound. His name at the time was Jimmy and he spent all of his free time with Crake. The elite scientists lived in protected Compounds; the rest lived in Pleeblands, slum-like, crime-infested cities where those who don't qualify to live in Compounds exist. People travel from Compound to Compound on bulletproof trains. If people go into the Pleeblands for a visit, they must be inoculated against diseases, which abound there. The middle class doesn't seem to exist. It's either the exclusive world of the Compounds or the slums of the Pleeblands.
And it's a world overrun with biotechnology, where people are fixated on longevity and physical perfection. Does any of this sound familiar? Pharmaceutical companies are very powerful. Crake suggests something about including a virus in pills (for which, of course, they have the antidote), because diseases are in danger of becoming extinct just like dentists after tooth decay was eradicated. Strange animals have been invented, such as the Pigoon, a pig created to grow foolproof human-tissue organs for transplant, and the Rakunk, an odor-free animal derived from raccoons and skunks.
Crake eventually becomes very important in his Compound and he brings Jimmy along with him. Oryx is a strange, beautiful woman, with equally strange beginnings. Both Jimmy and Crake are in love with her. Her job at the Compound is to teach the Crakers, and she makes Jimmy promise to take care of them if something happens to her. Things go wrong, and we find Snowman (Jimmy's new name) trying to exist on an empty planet. Or is it empty?
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 19 2003 |