Snowman's Soliloquy (Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood)

Member Name: Puggers

Product:	Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Date:	18/08/09 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A mesmerising tale of prodigious imagination, bleak, clever and insightful.

Disadvantages: An ending that leaves you hanging ...

"What if we continue down the road we're already on? How slippery is the slope? What are our saving graces? Who's got the will to stop us?"

These, the author's own words, preface this 2003 Booker Prize nominee, framing a dystopian story with similarly chilling, end-is-nigh themes to her most famous work, The Handmaid's Tale.

The dystopian-fiction genre is one rich with possibility, but originality can be elusive. To be effective, the future-shocks need to play on genuine trepidation and fears rather than simply playing lazy Orwellian tribute (Ben Elton's Blind Faith, for example). Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, evoking allusions to genetic modification, cloned animals and designer children, is a suitably stark and unsettling, bitterly sweet tragi-comic tale of a world riven by human hubris.

The story centres on Snowman, the bitter, reluctant last carrier of the human torch. Living in a tree, wrapped in a filthy blanket and haunted by the voice of the woman he loved, Snowman (known as Jimmy in a previous life) is accompanied only by the viciously altered creatures that stalk him and the semi-human, simple-minded Children of Crake, who regard him as a somewhat freakish curiosity.

Atwood's narrative is double-edged. Whilst we see Snowman's efforts to survive in the harsh afterworld humanity brought about, we also follow Jimmy's life in a series of flashbacks. Building up to a devastating, haunting climax, these past-flashes gradually unveil how man's oblivion came about, who Oryx and Crake were and why memories and the legacy of the pair hang so heavily over Snowman.

This structure is as well-chosen as it is skilfully executed. Although full comprehension is slow-released, we come to see Snowman/Jimmy as a star-crossed victim of fate, shouldering the retribution of the Gods for his race's excesses. Though the flashbacks, our protagonist's unwitting supporting role in the downfall is a saddening foreshadow of his present predicament.

Never a hero as such, Snowman is all the more human for it, just as 1984's Winston was for his low-key, self-serving revolution. Atwood's main character is in many ways just a misfortunate Everyman, an observer who ends up at the centre of things, and does his best to cope.

Plenty of tragedy in the tragi-comedy, then. Atwood, though infuses Jimmy with life in the flashbacks, and as his younger self especially, there's plenty to identify with. Even in Snowman, there's a bleak, black sense of humour. There's also plenty of subtle and not-so-subtle comedy in the parodies of current human obsessions, from the all-consuming march of Starbucks to the endless quest for physical perfection.

Oryx and Crake is a superlative novel, as both a disturbing vision of the world's future and an excellent, expertly-crafted story in its own right. Atwood talks about her debt to Orwell's famed work, and the parallels are to be seen here. However, it's the hopeless atmosphere and tangible sense of foreboding that is familiar, rather than anything in the plot or characterisation.

A certain level of criticism has been directed at Atwood's characterisation in Oryx and Crake, claiming some of the key figures are one-dimensional and hard to identify with. It's true enough that it's hard to feel much empathy for one or two central characters, but this surely intentional on the author's part, and these elusive personalities are crucial to the book's plot and tone. The ending, too, may leave some unsatisfied - and I was one of these, although I was disappointed largely because I wasn't ready for the story to end, so enthralling was it.

If you enjoyed Orwell or Huxley, or are simply enticed by the prospect of a tale of great scope and magnificent imagination, Oryx and Crake will not disappoint. One of the best books I've read in the last few years, the world Atwood creates here is revisited in the soon-to-be-released The Year of the Flood. I'll be sure to stake a place in the queue.

Summary: Human hubris brings doom, leaving one man to pick up the pieces.