Book Review: Oryx and Crake

I first heard about the book "Oryx and Crake" on NPR some years back. They brought the author, Margaret Atwood, on and they talked about the book. It caught my interest enough that I wrote the name of the book on a Post-it and stuck it to my monitor. There it stayed for several years before I threw it away. Then I went to the Friends of the Arlington Library Book Sale and found a hard bound copy for $4. I grabbed it.

It wasn't what I was expecting at all.

The book takes place in two time frames.
The main time frame is after the fall of civilization and follows a guy who calls himself Snowman. Snowman calls a tree near the shore his home. He wears only a sheet and wishes for a hat. He is visited frequently by a new breed of human whose tribe lives nearby. He tries to survive in a world where everything is gone except for specially engineered people and animals. He also goes scavenging in a nearby city.

The second time frame is all Snowman's flashbacks. He remembers growing up as a little boy named Jimmy. Back then he lived in a compound that was run by the company his parents worked for. The compound was a high security walled city run by a company that engineered new lifeforms. They had to guard against diseases that other companies in other compounds tried to use to kill off the stock of competitors. They also had the best schools and the best food.

Outside of the compounds is the pleeblands. Their schools aren't nearly as good, nor is their lifestyle. Still, they work and live and get by well enough to be able to afford the medications and age defying treatments developed in the compounds.

Jimmy knew Crake as a kid. Jimmy was fairly average, but Crake was a sort of genius. They were friends. Eventually they met Oryx. They both loved her.

Crake designed the new humans that live near Snowman. He eliminated body hair, imposed mating cycles, gave them insect repellant body odor, and tried to create his vision of perfect humans. Then a disease wiped out almost the entire human population.

There's no real plot to speak of. You're just exploring this new world with Snowman as he tells you his life story and how this world came to be.

I wouldn't put this in my top 10 books, but it really is a good read.