Oryx and Crake


Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
360
Narrator
33
Release Date
May 6, 2003
Duration
10 hours 30 minutes
Summary
A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize

Margaret Atwood’s new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it.

This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For readers of Oryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again.

The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief.

With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers.
Reviews
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Karen W.

What a gripping story very well written and read. One of my favorites!

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Jamie S.

This is an unusual apocalyptic story. It opens in a place that is readily understood to be unusual and gradually offers insight through flashbacks into what the state of affairs was before things came to be as they are, only in the very end explaining precisely how they got that way (though there is plenty of material for big-picture speculation in advance of it being revealed). The story also ends in a way that falls short of decreeing the future and raises some fairly thought-provoking questions for the reader who imagines what he or she might do in a similar situation. I consider this to be as noteworthy a dystopian fiction as Atwood's better-known work, "The Handmaid's Tale." Like that book, this one warns of what could happen if certain social forces already in place are allowed to gain the upper hand.

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Cindy R.

I'm learning to appreciate sci-fi, and this book was very well written. But not sure I'll ever be a total fan of the genre!

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Gaith A.

Nice book!!

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Serhii Y.

Amazing book. Though the plot development is sort of predictable, the execution is flawless. Awesome characterisaton, so many little details that make the world and participants vivid and believable. I absolutely adored tie ins across many chapters to some background filling charachters like a 'reading of makbeth'. I had a several good chuckles and even a few loud ones which adds some sweet flavor into the mix of sorrow and even horror the book emanates. Lots of controversial themes are covered from eugenics to child pornography and even the latter the author managed to present in a standard-challenging ways. I had a blast, hope you will also.

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Elise S.

I liked this book a lot. It’s classic Margaret Atwood, so if you like her other dystopian books, you’ll like this one too. I could have done without the kiddie porn. Oryx could have had a different back-story that was just as plausible. I liked the ending a lot, although I saw that other reviewers thought it was a cop-out. Ending the story with a big question mark about what will happen next gives the reader an opportunity to write their own ending.

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Natasha H

I Loved this book! The narrative slowly unfolded and i couldn't stop listening! I love Atwood's dystopian future settings, and the way she incorporates science into her fiction without being completely over the top.

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Jason C

This is a Frightening but realistic view of where our world is heading, and should serve as a warning.

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Amy Aro

I think the idea of this trilogy was so creative, but poorly executed. The first book is about jimmy, then he barely makes an appearance in book 2 or 3.

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Leah Beall

This book is fairly long, but it has many elements I enjoy. It is a dystopian novel with elements of child abuse and neglect, terrible parental figures, an unreliable protagonist who is absolutely miserable, interesting female characters, and a devious anti-hero. It has sci-fi elements all throughout, including computerized components, hacking, genetically altered people and creatures, voluntary body modifications, and secret altering elements in the drugs. There are conspiracies and clones. I loved this book. If you are sensitive to graphic language--mostly sexual, including rape and child-pornography moment--and terrible events involving mass genocide of a species, you won't like it, but it is excellent. I cannot wait to read the others!

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deb

I just couldn't get into it. I'm an avid reader (listener) and download dozens of books, but I couldn't get into Oryx and Crake. It seemed disjointed to me and I constantly had to keep going back to figure out where I was - if you know what I mean. I never did finish it (maybe it gets better later?) At any rate, it's not one that I will transfer to CD and save . . .

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Anonymous

Great book....the ending was a little anti-climatic...only reason I didn't give it a 5 star

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