Details
Synopsis
In Margaret Atwood's 11th novel, she returns to the sci-fi concerns and social criticism that propelled THE HANDMAID'S TALE. ORYX AND CRAKE follows the fortunes of a man once named Jimmy, now called Snowman: his present-day life as a scavenger in a blasted world alternates with his memories of his past. The eponymous Oryx is an Asian girl he encounters on a website featuring child pornography, and Crake is a brilliantly gifted childhood friend who grows up to be a scientist involved in creating artificial life. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003.
| Size | | Length: | 400 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 10.2 oz |
Industry Reviews
"A landmark work of speculative fiction, comparable to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, BRAVE NEW WORLD, and...WE. Atwood has surpassed herself."
Kirkus Reviews (03/15/2003)
"What Atwood's inventive treatment of first and last things lacks is a plausible psychological basis....We can take in only so many confected scenarios of future life before we crave a complexity of character commensurate with the intelligence of the plot or the confident excellence of the writing. Alas, it is not to be. The characters' background stories feel somewhat arbitrarily assigned, and their actions are conditioned at every turn by the logic of the premise....But...a novel like ORYX AND CRAKE can address the present-day world in a way that crates a powerful para-literary experience. What tones we lose through the lack of true complexity of character are to some degree compensated for by the peculiar triangulation that obtains among reader, novel and world."
New York Times Book Review - Sven Birkerts (05/18/2003)
"The truly frightening thing about Atwood's dystopia is that so little of it is far-fetched....[H]er greater message, like that of Swift's Yahoos, is beyond hope: mankind has hit its evolutionary ceiling."
Times Literary Supplement - Ronald Wright (05/16/2003)
"ORYX AND CRAKE is a roller-coaster ride. The book proceeds from terrifying grimness, through lonely mournfulness, until, midway, a morbid silliness begins sporadically to assert itself, like someone, exhausted by bad news, hysterically succumbing to giggles at a funeral."
(05/19/2007)
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