Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

...emotional responses. Both Crake and Oryx are more enigmatic, Snowman struggles to hold onto what he thought he knew, but there are gaping holes in the lives of these people he loved that he cannot document.

Goodness, I've told you quite a lot haven't I? But without ruining any of this well strung plot. The book is so packed with detail, so very well thought out, that although you kind of know right from the beginning what the bones ...
...every last morsel of flesh. The commentary on the dangers of mixing scientific progress and commercialism is stinging. The world Jimmy lived in was one powered by greed and a complete disrespect for the well being or happiness of individuals, especially those outside the compounds. In contrast that enjoyed by the Crakers is safe, they have no concept of violence, sex, jealousy or God, no need for money or clothing, yet something in their makeup binds ... more

Just before Christmas I spent a couple of days on the train to and from work with my head inside a lurid hardback, lime green spotted with neon pink and blue. The south west trains announcer ellicted wide smiles of joy in me every time he announced a delay, while my fellow commuters scowled and buried their faces deeper into their scarves I almost jumped for joy, since it meant I could gobble up a few more pages of this deliciously cynical book.

Few people can fail to have heard of Margaret Atwood, the woman has a hoard of prizes and prize nominations under her belt, not to mention a long list of critically acclaimed novels. This, the latest work of fiction to flow from her pen, earned her yet another Booker nomination for 2003. I have to say though initially I didn't rush to pick this up. I went through an Atwood phase as a teenager, read her back catalogue, and then didn't really succumb to any of the new offerings. But despite this reluctance, and the over sized nature of the tome itself, I did nose through the first few pages, and instantly found myself hooked.

'Oryx And Crake', if you want a nutshell definition, is a discussion of just how horrible people are. But it encapsulates many other subtle threads and themes, whilst managing to be a cracking good story, well written, well researched, and in places very funny. 'Oryx and Crake' gives a brief nod to Atwood's most famous book, 'The Handmaid's Tale' in it's description of the futuristic devastation of human civilisation, and people just being downright awful to each other.

But let's start at the beginning.

The book opens on Snowman, a dirty, sheet wrapped man sleeping in a tree. He appears to be the sole survivor of some catastrophe, half starved and apparently bordering on insanity. His companions in this sun bleached territory devoid of humans consist of wolvogs, rakunks, some luminous green rabbits and The Children of Crake, a group of mild mannered, child like humanoids. The interaction is touching, the children treat Snowman as an oracle, he knows what is safe and what is not, and though they find him bizarre and leave him to his own devices in the tree, they clearly respect him.

We get some snatches of what might have happened, hints at destruction and catastrophe, death panic and fear. Quickly we meet Snowman's former incarnation, Jimmy, in a series of childhood flashbacks starting at about age 5. Parents, friends, girlfriends, all are paraded infront of us. This childhood was played out in a Compound environment, son to scientist parents involved in genetic engineering for the consumer. Initially Jimmy lives at OrganInc where 'Pigoons' are bred to provide human body parts. This first introduction to the science is good, bordering on things that have been done already in our own world. By using such a plausible starting point, the things that we are to see later all seem to follow on as a logically progression of the technology, Atwood has done her research, using some valid terminology and making up other words that slip easily into the text. The science compounds have a 'Brave New World' air about them, man messing about with the building blocks of life, changing the social order, the CorpSeCorp guards in particular highlight how regimented this new way of life is, very little freedom exists in Atwood's imagined future.

In between the flashbacks we see Snowman struggling with his new life, where voices whisper to him incessantly. Jimmy gets older, moving on to high school where he meets Crake. They have little in common intellectually, as will be proved by their college placements later, but they hit it off, and spend years together plugged into the Internet, where state sponsored sex and murder are available on a pay-per-view basis. The fare on offer for entertainment seems to be a comment on the disintegration of the moral fibre of the population. Pornography has been pushed to ever lower levels and taken into the mainstream, child prostitution is rife, Jimmy gets fixated with one of the little girls on one of these sites, one he will come to meet in later life and know as Oryx. As the boys get older, Crake gets ever stranger, obsessed with what is 'real', playing computer simulations with extinct animals and perfecting his splicing techniques to create every stranger animals in the lab.

Even when their paths diverge, the boys stay each other's sole friends. Crake makes it big in the genetic manipulation world, and finally draws Jimmy back to his side as his right hand man at the centre of the most powerful of compounds.

These pieces all come together gradually, as Jimmy shows us his past life, and Snowman shows us his utter lack of future. A last ditch excursion back through the Pleeblands to the compounds provides Atwood the opportunity to show us more of the devastation apparent as the book draws to an end and we are confronted with the big picture. How did it all happen?

As far as characterisation goes, Jimmy is nicely drawn, but he isn't meant to be an amazingly likeable character. Snowman has his redeeming features, but Jimmy is a selfish, sexual predator of a man. His obsession with Oryx's past is disturbing, his need for the woman he ultimately loves to have been that little girl in the porn he watched as a teenager. In parts of his story he cannot help but feel self pity, in others he is just angry and confused. The sections concerning his lost mother are revealing, both in terms of the Authorities determination to find her, and in Jimmy's emotional responses. Both Crake and Oryx are more enigmatic, Snowman struggles to hold onto what he thought he knew, but there are gaping holes in the lives of these people he loved that he cannot document.

Goodness, I've told you quite a lot haven't I? But without ruining any of this well strung plot. The book is so packed with detail, so very well thought out, that although you kind of know right from the beginning what the bones of the story are, Atwood still makes you hungry for every last morsel of flesh. The commentary on the dangers of mixing scientific progress and commercialism is stinging. The world Jimmy lived in was one powered by greed and a complete disrespect for the well being or happiness of individuals, especially those outside the compounds. In contrast that enjoyed by the Crakers is safe, they have no concept of violence, sex, jealousy or God, no need for money or clothing, yet something in their makeup binds them to their human ancestry. Atwood prods us to consider how long this population can remain pure, what myths and gods will come to fruition and enslave these people in the rules and boundaries we ourselves are confined by.

Yet even in this post apocalypse world, Atwood can squeeze unexpected beauty from the text, a few moments stop you in your tracks with the unveiling of something good and clean in this raped landscape. The following extract is one such gem, which stops you, spins you around, and then makes you smile with Atwood's caustic wit slicing through the sentiment with a down to earth last sentence:

"A caterpillar is letting itself down on a thread, twirling slowly like a rope artist, spiralling towards his chest. It's a luscious, unreal green, like a gumdrop, and covered with tiny bright hairs. Watching it, he feels a sudden, inexplicable surge of tenderness and joy. Unique, he thinks. There will never be another such moment of time, another such conjunction.
These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency."

Recommended? What do you think? It's great writing, from start to finish, with some genuinely funny concepts and a few dark laughs along the way. Atwood has used her careful prose to construst an entire world. She has taken the bones of what technology is capable of now, and used her poetic licence to accelerate that technology to dizzying heights, and then slams on the brakes to ask 'Could this happen? Whose hands are safe enough for such power?'.
Certainly an enjoyable read, and more unusually, something that might make you think.

'Oryx and Crake' by Margaret Atwood
Hardback RRP £16.99, but you can find it cheaper on amazon and similar sites, or wait 'til March for the paperback...

 

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