Book Review: Oryx and Crake

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

If there ever was a book for our times, Oryx and Crake, the first novel in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, is it. Oryx and Crake is a story about a pandemic, one that is, if you can believe it, even more shocking than the one we are currently living through.

The story is told through the eyes of a man named Jimmy, alternating between the present and his pre-plague flashbacks. Bit by bit, these reminiscences slowly explain how Jimmy came to find himself in his current situation — possibly the only human left on Earth, camped out on a toxic beach, reflecting on the events that landed him there.

In the present, Jimmy is regularly visited by the Crakers, strange beings who were engineered to survive the plague that wiped out everyone Jimmy knows. The Crakers are essentially Humans 2.0 — people-like in appearance but with some of humanity’s greatest flaws (think religion, envy, violence, carnivorous diets, and monogamy) genetically engineered out of their psyches.

You might ask why someone living through a pandemic would want to read a book about one. My answer is that, in spite of the dystopian plot, Oryx and Crake gave me hope.

In the novel, many of the most disastrous things that happen, including the humanity-ending pandemic, were caused, quite intentionally, by humans. In Jimmy’s flashbacks, you learn about a greed-filled world where children watch gruesome porn for fun, genetically engineered animal hybrids roam the world, and corporations control the law.

Sure, some of that sounds familiar. Atwood no doubt drew was inspired by the rise of genetically engineered produce, and there are certainly conspiracy theorists today who believe our real-life pandemic was created in a lab. But ultimately, for me, as Oryx and Crake painted the picture of how horribly, terribly wrong things can go during a pandemic, I began paying more attention to the good that I see in our real world today.

Check back in with my blog in the coming weeks for upcoming reviews of the next two books in this trilogy: The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam. You can also buy Oryx and Crake here.

Rating: 5 stars

Rating Scale:
5 Stars: I love this book!!!
4 Stars: Pretty good
3 Stars: Good
2 Stars: Not for me
1 Star: Truly dislike