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Tarfumes.com - Oryx and Crake
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $10.17
Your Save: $ 4.78 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Anchor
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385721677
ISBN: 0385721676
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 376
Publication Date: 2004-05
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: 2004-03-30
Studio: Anchor
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Unlikable
Comment: After reading and enjoying the style, characters, and content of The Handmaid's Tale, I was eager to start reading Oryx and Crake. However, unlike The Handmaid's Tale, this book featured one-note characterization of the main characters - Jimmy/Snowman, Oryx, and Crake. I think Atwood was going for an "ordinary guy" type character with Jimmy, but she misses by using cliches - a heavy drinking, sex-crazed kid who has had some troubles in life but we don't know much more about him than that. His love and devotion for Oryx seems contrived and unbelievable. In my opinion, it is the parts about Oryx, though definitely interesting, that make this book such a disappointment. Oryx, to me, was quite grating and simply unlikable. I didn't understand why Jimmy felt so attracted to her, except that he is usually drawn to damaged girls. But Atwood's characterization of Oryx as a forgiving, child-like woman seemed overdone. She doesn't use contractions when she talks and doesn't see anything wrong with anyone's treatment of her. Her horror-filled childhood of being sold at the age of 5 and then being in child porn movies also seemed a little much for me. I found Crake very interesting and I almost think this book would have been better if it had concentrated more on his and Jimmy' friendship, and how that led to the downfall of society. This book tried to cover too much ground, and in the end, I found myself feeling unfulfilled and confused about what Atwood's purpose was, and feeling a little jipped that I'd suffered through over 300 points waiting for the point.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Didn't care about the characters after 150 pages
Comment: Really wanted to like this book. After reading 150 pages I still didn't care about the characters. I decided to stop wasting my time and energy on this depressing, uninteresting book. I can't remember the last book I didn't finish prior to this one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: seems prophetic
Comment: This book reminds me of A Brave New World. It's a fast-paced, believable look into the not-too-distant future. In Atwood's America, we've become narcissists who attempt to quicken our deadened souls with cyber-porn, voyeuristic violence, mood altering drugs, and relentless combat against aging and death. It would seem that mankind in Oryx and Crake has forgotten -- or rejected -- that it was made in the image of God. The book was not at all farfetched, given the slippery slope our narcissistic Facebook generation is heading down with genetic research/manipulation, abortion on demand, legalized suicide, and rampant sexual desensitization through all manner of internet pornography. The book accurately diagnoses the very-real problem but, alas, doesn't hint at a solution, which I would have liked to have seen. All in all, though, it was an engaging, memorable, and thought-provoking read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Comment: How could I have missed this masterpiece for so long ? . Ranks with 1984 and Brave New World but told in a simpler prose. Atwood hooks the reader with the enigma of Snowman's current predicament while interweaving
her vision of a dystopian future. Some may not agree with her general thesis but she tells a compelling tale.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting take on a common theme
Comment: I really enjoyed this book and the way it was written was slightly different from the usual apocalyptic novel. It starts with the world already at an end and through Snowman's memories and thoughts we are taken through his life and ultimatly how man's destruction came about while also following Snowman's current fight for survival.
Some people have claimed the ending is poor. I disagree I think it is fairly obvious what is going to happen, even if it is not explicitly written out, but I can't go into more detail without giving away the end. Suffice to say it doesn't explain how the world will continue but then it would take a whole other book to do that.
I have taken off one star because they was a couple of points that I felt should have/could have been better explained. Again, unlike others I feel Crake's motivation is fairly obvious but I was not so sure what (or why) his intentions were towards himself and Jimmy in his last scene. Why was Jimmy brought to work at Reejov? I also was waiting on an explanation about Orynx that never came. Was she real? Were her memories real or was she an early creation of Crake's who had implanted these memories based on his and Jimmy's internet encouters. I also felt a chance was missed to explore the pleeblands in more detail either through Jimmy making more excursions there or through his mother. This may have given another element to the story.
However despite these minor quips I enjoyed the book and although Jimmy/Snowman is a fairly despondant and morose individual (maybe understandable) I really wanted to know what would happen next.
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