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
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