RFG Book Review

I just finished reading a tiny unsung gem of a book (actually, not that tiny...) by Margaret Atwood that I found remaindered (gasp!) at B&N. I think the title had something to do with it, as it's a bit obscure-sounding: Oryx and Crake.

Atwood has gone back to her "Handmaid's Tale" style of futuristic allegory with this one. Only the apocolyptic vision of O & C comes after a good chunk of the world drowns due to global warming (pardon me, climate change). Getting too far into it would give away the story, but the artistry with which she winds plot and character is masterful. We open to a mysterious loner who calls himself "Snowman." This malcreant lives in a tree to protect himself from the blazing noonday sun, and is regularly tormented by a group of inquisitive children.

Then, going back and forth in time, Atwood lays out the story, told through Snowman's hunger-fuzzy vision, of he and his childhood friend, Crake, and the girl who came between them. The boys grew up with every privilege in a special secure compound. Their parents were preternatural geniuses who worked in this compound's lab creating various gene-spliced "upgrades" to improve the human condition in this challenged new world. The boys, after college, take over the family business, so to speak, but with quite different results. Which, ultimately, leave Snowman up a tree with a lot of 'splaining to do to this band of children.

I was willing to overlook a few minor plot flaws to go along on the ride through this brave new world. I probably even would have paid full price for it.