Critic At Large: Oryx and Crake

Margaret Atwood is one of those authors whom I’ve long wanted to read but never got around to actually picking up her books. That oversight was corrected when my book club selected Oryx and Crake as our monthly selection. The book tells the story of the friendship between Jimmy and Crake, a couple of privileged kids who grow up in one of the heavily guarded corporate Compounds that dot the near-future American landscape. The world beyond the Compound walls is a grim one. Climate change has ravaged the planet and most people live in the blighted urban centers known as pleeblands. Genetically engineered pathogens run rampant in the pleeblands and sometimes infiltrate the Compounds. But the corporations that operate the Compounds are also engineering new plants and animals that might prove commercially successful in this rapidly changing world.  Against this backdrop, Jimmy and Crake grow up, drift apart, and reconnect just before the world ends. They also both fall in love with a beautiful and secretive woman named Oryx.

Atwood’s dystopia contains a lot of familiar elements: megalomaniacal corporations, a privileged elite living in isolation from the suffering masses, science run amok. While these elements are a little well-worn, her characters are nuanced and complicated; especially Jimmy. Jimmy yearns for the approval of both Oryx and Crake, but he can never quite get beyond his own narcissism, not until the world ends and even then it’s a struggle for him. Without Jimmy, this book would just be another stroll through Armageddon. Jimmy acts as our guide and our imperfect voice of conscience as we travel with him through his broken world. His presence elevates the book from mediocre to something pretty great.

Incidentally, Atwood just published The Year of the Flood, which tells a parallel story set in the same world. It’s definitely a must-read for me now.