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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Margaret Atwood - Oryx And Crake and others (minor spoilers)

21:05 / 15.07.05

I've just finished this, by the end I wasn't sure I liked it very much. When I tried to define why, however, I couldn't really express it -all I could think about was how well plotted it is, how nicely constructed all the little bits of plot that link together are, and could really only remember the good things about it.

It reminded me a lot of her Cat's Eye in terms of structure -the present and the past are shown fairly concurrently through the eyes of one narrator -but obviously the setting, in post apocalyptic America, is very different. That's another thing I found well-drawn -everything about the world as she imagined it was (I thought) believable, as was the way that state of affairs was reached.

I think that ultimately the latter point is why I had a problem with it; things seemed too mechanical, almost too obvious, to be entirely affecting. It was clear that Crake was always going to be an ambivalent character at best, so all that was left to the reader was to see how that ambivalence came to the end point. The inevitability of which, I suppose, tied in quite nicely with what Jimmy and Crake used to watch together... but it certainly felt like it dropped off a bit towards the end.

What did other people think? Is there anything huge I've missed about it (as I might have read it too quickly)?

Ex

16:42 / 21.07.05

I found this frustrating also. I have really enjoyed a lot of her work - particularly Surfacing, a quick read compared to its brick-like successors, and The Handmaid's Tale. And also Alias Grace, although with more problems (partly the length of it - a lot of bread and not much sack/bang for your buck).

But Oryx and Crake felt rather slack. I think it was hampered by a vapid narrator - it's hard to stick it out with someone who deliberately has very little self-awareness for the whole plot. Little aspects of this could have taken off - the slippage between horror at the production techniques of a fast food brand and it becoming his favourite dish was a point where it seemed to make sense as a device. But he wasn't really passionate or interesting enough to be an unreliable narrator - he was just a blandly unlikeable narrator.

It had some of the same sturctural problems as Alias Grace - slow build, lots of detail, back and forth between two timelines, not much happening in either of them - but Grace, I felt, delivered a doozy right at the close. And furthermore, a doozy which when you pick at it tied in nicely to the rest of the novel - not just in terms of earlier scenes making sense logically, but thematically too. When I reread it I noticed a lot about the reliability of memory, the gendered objectivity of the developing mental health 'sciences'... all potentially clunky, but at least there were other layers. With Oryx and Crake, I didn't feel that layering. The sudden end happened, and not only did it not really tie up logical lose ends (I'd love it if someone can point me to bits I'd missed on that score) but thematically, it didn't seem coherent.
I've just remembered that The Blind Assassin did exactly the same thing, for me. Slow build, two timelines, big finish - but not very big, I'd already spotted the twist and in the end I can only remember one striking metaphor from the entire book.

I haven't read either in about a year, so will stand corrected on any of the above.
Also, a fellow Barbeloid said that the science bits were terrible, nonsensical, worse than Jurassic Park, needing a cold flannel on the face and a lie-down bad. I will point that laser-like mind to this thread.

07:32 / 25.07.05

Yes, please do! I think that she did rather well to avoid the usual 'bad science' trap of too much detail ("and then we stuck the gene together with SCOTCH TAPE and look! A mutant squirrel") so I'd like to hear specifically why it was bad.

Back later, but is Alias Grace written in the first person? I think that one of the reasons Oryx And Crake might have suffered is that if a character is unsympathetic to start with the added distance of the third person isn't likely to make the reader care about them. And in this case, at least, it might have made the book read a bit better for me -for example, I might have managed to flail together a bit more sympathy for Jimmy and his family after his mother left, or might have understood everyone's motivations a bit better if there had been a bit more detail on why Jimmy and Crake not only hung around together at school but stayed friends after that.

Ex

08:16 / 26.07.05

Back later, but is Alias Grace written in the first person?

Several different first persons, and some third person, which also tied nicely into the theme about the ultimate impossibility of objective observation/truth.

Anyone have an opinion on The Blind Assassin, also? Not to hijack the thread, but I was surprised it won the Booker. There was a strand in that novel about older SciFi mags, and I'm sure there are Barbeloids who have a better knowledge can tell me whether the allegedly canny homages are any good or, as I suspect, are dribbly dribble.

14:25 / 26.07.05

I quite liked the slow build of Oryx & Crake. Blended well to the feeling of portentous doom hanging over the book.

I agree the 'Snowman' narrator is hard to like but I don't think his lack of self awareness and general smallness hamper the book. I like the fact that he represents the nobody, the drifting person lost in a world of things bigger than him (in the same way as say the narrative character in Fourniers 'Le Grand Meaulnes') - namely Crake intellectually, Oryx sexually/empathically, the science around him, God. The only thing he ever really loves are the pigoons. It strikes me as being similar in vein to Herman Hesse's Demian. Unfortunately its the little man that's punished at the end.

I don't think the fact that some of the science around the book is bullshit (I wouldn't know either way): it doesn't lessen the overall narrative.