Oryx and Crake

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

A marvellous, wonderfully written atmospheric story set well into the future, which is grim indeed, and full of horrors following 'the disease'. Jimmy, now known as Snowman, is a survivor, and we follow his life both before and after the catastrophe. Oryx and Crake are shadowy figures from the past, who influence the present, and the whole book has a nightmarish vision of reality. This is a major piece of fiction by a supremely talented author; a novel to haunt your dreams, full of characters and animals who are only too lifelike.

UK Kirkus review

In this book, Atwood returns to the territory she explored so effectively in The Handmaid's Tale, only this time the threat is much greater. In a future not that far distant from our own, the consequences of man's intervention in the natural world have become all too apparent. The precise nature of recent events remains unclear for much of the book but from early on it is apparent that some kind of biotechnological disaster has occurred, leaving the narrator, Snowman, who in another world was known as Jimmy, as possibly the last human on earth. But Snowman is not alone, sharing with the mysterious green-eyed Children of Crake the land on which the tree that is now his home stands. The book alternates Snowman's bleak present-day existence, foraging for food and clad only in a sheet, with scenes from his past, showing how the dream of a brave new world went horribly wrong. It's also a love story: of Snowman's yearning for his long-vanished mother; for Oryx, a woman he first saw on a child porn internet channel, and for his brilliant but dangerous best friend, Crake. Growing up in a compound provided by his father's employers and designed to keep out the undesirables who live in the surrounding 'pleeblands', Jimmy finds life cold and confusing but his exhibitionism and humour earn him a few casual friends and when Crake joins his school he feels a new sense of belonging, although it is a relationship that is to have deadly consequences. Atwood is at her brilliant best when conjuring up these all-too-believable scenarios in worlds apparently only one small step away from our own. She clearly relishes the type of inventiveness required here, conjuring up a world of strange creatures and products, including the once useful and occasionally cute pigoons and rakunks, the BlyssPluss pill and the potentially sinister computer game Extinctathon. It makes uncomfortable but compelling reading. (Kirkus UK)