Displaying 1 of 1 2003 Format: Book Author: Atwood, Margaret, 1939- Title: Oryx and Crake : a novel / Margaret Atwood. Edition: 1st ed. in the U.S. Publisher, Date: New York : Nan A. Talese, 2003. Description: 376 p. ; 25 cm. Subjects: Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction. Genetic engineering -- Fiction. Male friendship -- Fiction. New York (State) -- Fiction. Genre: Science fiction. Love stories. Dystopias. Notes: B & T 6/03 Dickinson Area Public Library Web Site: Contributor biographical information Wishek School - City Library Sample text Wishek School - City Library Publisher description Wishek School - City Library Contributor biographical information Northwood City Library Sample text Northwood City Library Publisher description Northwood City Library LCCN: 2002073290 ISBN: 0385503857 OCLC: 50774561 System Availability: 4 # System items in: 3 # Local items: 1 # Local items in: 0 Current Holds: 0 Place Request Add to My List Expand All | Collapse All Availability Awards Large Cover Image Trade Reviews Library Journal ReviewA number of ecological and scientific disasters result in a future where cloning is commonplace, gene manipulation runs amuck, and social inequality becomes the norm. Eventually, chaos reigns, modern society destroys itself, and the world reverts to its precivilization history by means of a scientifically created tribe called the Crakers. Playing with language, Atwood makes up words and phrases, with homeroom becoming hoodroom, parents becoming parental units, raccoons and skunks racunks, and pigs pigoons. These tapes are professionally produced, with no background noise or tape hiss. Campbell Scott's flawless and well-paced delivery, combined with his wide range of tonal variations, assists the listener in tracking the various characters and adds to the overall ambiance of the story. Working on many levels, this is a thought-provoking yet frighteningly prescient tale. Recommended for public and academic libraries.-Laurie Selwyn, Grayson Cty. Law Lib., Sherman, TX(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.Publishers Weekly ReviewAtwood has visited the future before, in her dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale. In her latest, the future is even bleaker. The triple whammy of runaway social inequality, genetic technology and catastrophic climate change, has finally culminated in some apocalyptic event. As Jimmy, apparently the last human being on earth, makes his way back to the RejoovenEsencecompound for supplies, the reader is transported backwards toward that cataclysmic event, its full dimensions gradually revealed. Jimmy grew up in a world split between corporate compounds (gated communities metastasized into city-states) and pleeblands (unsafe, populous and polluted urban centers). His best friend was "Crake," the name originally his handle in an interactive Net game, Extinctathon. Even Jimmy's mother-who ran off and joined an ecology guerrilla group when Jimmy was an adolescent-respected Crake, already a budding genius. The two friends first encountered Oryx on the Net; she was the eight-year-old star of a pedophilic film on a site called HottTotts. Oryx's story is a counterpoint to Jimmy and Crake's affluent adolescence. She was sold by her Southeast Asian parents, taken to the city and eventually made into a sex "pixie" in some distant country. Jimmy meets Oryx much later-after college, after Crake gets Jimmy a job with ReJoovenEsence. Crake is designing the Crakers-a new, multicolored placid race of human beings, smelling vaguely of citron. He's procured Oryx to be his personal assistant. She teaches the Crakers how to cope in the world and goes out on secret missions. The mystery on which this riveting, disturbing tale hinges is how Crake and Oryx and civilization vanished, and how Jimmy-who also calls himself "the Snowman," after that other rare, hunted specimen, the Abominable Snowman-survived. Chesterton once wrote of the "thousand romances that lie secreted in The Origin of Species." Atwood has extracted one of the most hair-raising of them, and one of the most brilliant. (May 6) Forecast: Readers who know Atwood primarily as the author of The Handmaid's Tale will be thrilled by this return to the future; those who follow her work more closely will be even more impressed. This is a potential dystopian classic and should sell accordingly. Author tour. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved Series Librarian's View Displaying 1 of 1
