Book Reflections – Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

I bought a copy of this book second hand years ago and took it when I moved to Norway and back, but resisted reading it until I really needed it last month. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood did not let me down. I’m glad I kept it as emergency reading.

At the centre of this dystopian novel is protagonist Jimmy. He’s not particularly gifted and is a disappointment to his scientist father. They live in a compound, guarded so that the general public of the pleeblands can’t get in. The compounds are run by corporations who provide a safe and pristine living environment for their workers. They are involved in futuristic biotechnology. Jimmy feels his average intelligence is a disadvantage, surrounded as he is by gifted children, and largely ignored by his parents.

The novel runs in two time periods simultaneously. We are in the horrible present with Jimmy, and we systematically move forward in time with Jimmy from early childhood to the present, thus learning the back story. In the present we know of Jimmy’s great friendship with a brilliant scientist who took the name of an extinct bird, the Crake, and Jimmy’s love for the beautiful sex worker who was trafficked to the USA, who took the name of an extinct antelope, the Oryx.

As the past approaches the present we come to understand Jimmy’s predicament. Atwood did a wonderful job with this novel. She designed a whole dystopian, futuristic world with associated terminology and technology, but she also wrote believable characters who have complex motivations and interactions with one another. I really enjoyed this book and I thoroughly recommend it. I’m now looking for a low cost copy of book 2 The Year of the Flood.