ORYX AND CRAKE

by Margaret Atwood



"As the story opens, 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, and slowly starving to death. In a world in which science-based corporations have recently taken mankind on an uncontrolled genetic-engineering ride, he now searches for supplies in a wasteland. How did everything fall apart so quickly?" (From the CD container.)

Now that I have read both books I will say I preferred The Year of the Flood, but Oryx and Crake was still really good. My preference lies in that I enjoyed the wider variety of characters presented in The Year of the Flood, but Oryx and Crake filled in a lot of questions raised from reading Flood first. I wrote previously that one does not need to read the books in order and I still stand by that statement, but if you have the opportunity I would recommend beginning with Oryx and Crake.

These two and The Handmaid's Tale are the only books by Margaret Atwood I have read, but I am now more convinced than ever that I need to explore her work further. The Handmaid's Tale would make My Life's Top 10 Books if I were to write that list today, and Oryx and Flood have left me even more curious about her other books. One of the things I found so striking in her writing in these two was her ability to write such beautiful formal prose, then suddenly jar me with modern slang or odd futuristic terminology and make it work. I'm looking forward to exploring the rest of her bibliography. Any suggestions regarding where to go from here?

THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD

by Margaret Atwood



"After a plague decimates almost all of humanity, Ren, a trapeze dancer trapped in a swanky sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a religious zealot holed in an extravagant spa, each believe they're the only survivors and debate leaving their strongholds. Meanwhile, Adam One, leader of God's Gardeners, navigates his band of followers through the forever changed world." (From the CD container.)

There are aspects of this book that remind me a lot of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Something, in this case it looks like a plague of some kind, wipes out most of the human population. When the belief is that most of the rest of the world is gone, the behaviour of people toward one another depends on which philosophy a person ultimately buys into: "We can all last a lot longer if we help each other" or "there's no one here to tell me I can't do whatever I want." Both amount to "only the strong survive", but have very different manners of expression. But whereas McCarthy vividly captures the overall bleak horror of a tragedy-altered earth, Atwood accentuates it with absurdity and individual personality. Both books offer disturbing pictures of the future if we continue on our self-absorbed, greed-fueled paths, but Atwood's leaves the reader with more hope. Until you think about it just a little bit longer.

I didn't realize until too late that this book is a sequel, so I will most likely revisit my thoughts regarding The Year of the Flood after I've read Oryx and Crake.



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Oryx and Crake