Dystopian Fiction | Book Chatter

Oryx and Crake
By Margaret Atwood
Vintage, 2004, 400pp.

The Short of It:

You know when they say that books should make you feel things? Yeah. Oryx and Crake will definitely leave you feeling things.

The Rest of It:

*No Spoilers*

I purchased this book at least a decade ago. I started it a few times and couldn’t get into it, but then a group of us online picked it as a book club pick, and so I looked for my copy, found it (amazing given the pile of books I have) and dove in.

I’ll be careful not to give much away because most of what you feel while reading it, is shock and dismay that such things can exist, and actually do today.

Atwood describes a bleak world. There is the before, and then there is the after. As a reader, you get a glimpse of how we got here but there is much left to the imagination as to what prompted it all. Dystopian worlds are bleak and lifeless but with Oryx and Crake, the story is teeming with life but in the most disturbing way.

Animals are hybrids. For example, Raccoons and Skunks become their own breed. Pigs? Something else entirely. People, aka humanoids, run around without clothing as there is no need for it. Food is scarce. But just like now, there are the HAVES and the HAVE NOTS. The Haves are pulling the strings and everything in this story is Biblical in nature.

Think Adam and Eve and the serpent.

Oryx and Crake is part of a trilogy which includes The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam. This book was a tough read. It was hard on my soul. Not just because of the times we are living in, but because the subject matter is delicate and that is why I will include a trigger warning here for sexual content because Atwood does not handle it in a delicate way. It’s front and center, in your face. I had to put the book down a few times but since it was a group read, I kept going.

Atwood called this story a “romance” and that just blows my mind.

Will I read the others in the trilogy? Probably, yes. Because as numb as we can all be to the nonsense of this world, you have to feel things now and then to know that you are still here.

Source: Purchased
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

Red Pill
By Hari Kunzru
Vintage, 2021, 304pp.

The Short of It:

Kind of a mind trip.

The Rest of It:

“After receiving a prestigious writing fellowship in Germany, the narrator of Red Pill arrives in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee and struggles to accomplish anything at all. Instead of working on the book he has proposed to write, he takes long walks and binge-watches Blue Lives,a violent cop show that becomes weirdly compelling in its bleak, Darwinian view of life. He soon begins to wonder if his writing has any value at all.” ~ from the publisher

I am not going to mince words, Red Pill was really hard to get into. It meandered and seemed somewhat dreamlike, to me. Our protagonist is, in my opinion, living the dream getting to do what he supposedly loves, writing, but he’s unfocused and unmotivated and on the verge of going astray.

Relegated to an open office concept to do his work in, he finds himself completely unable to write anything. So, he wanders. Past grave sites, believing that happiness cannot be found on earth. He meets Anton. A very eccentric guy and also the creator of Blue Lives, the violent show that our narrator is obsessed with. After a night of drinking and going from one place to another, our narrator is convinced that Anton is red-pilling his viewers to brainwash them with his alt-right views.

Reality? Fabricated? As I reader, I am not quite sure but our narrator loses his mind. Or maybe his mind was gone all along?

This book came out in 2021 but there are a few passages that I screenshot because they speak directly to those of us concerned about a select few reaping the benefits of what should belong to many.

Paragraph from Red Pill talking about the elite.

The times we are living in now, most definitely benefit the HAVES, not the have nots. Every now and then, as I was cruising along in this book, a truth bomb would drop and I’d be like, oh… yeah. Wow. Red Pill is that type of read. It’s not “in your face”, much more subtle. You will have to dig a little to find meaning.

Did I like it? Honestly, at 60% in I decided to let it go. I wasn’t enjoying it but since it’s a book club pick, I pushed through and then it began to pique my interest. So no, I didn’t love it but as a discussion book, there is plenty to discuss.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

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