Oryx and Crake

I had the fortune, or misfortune perhaps, to read this book during last week's major snow and ice storm in the Pacific Northwest.  Ice collected on our trees and brought down massive branches onto the electrical lines (to dramatic cracks and snaps!) across the region.  We lost power Thursday morning and didn't get it back until Monday night - nearly 5 full days of dark and cold. It was an ideal setting to read this novel about a horrifying dystopia set not too far into the future.

Jimmy/Snowman is perhaps the only human left alive on Earth, following a massive plague of dubious origin.  He co-exists with various animals and people (?) who have survived as the result of genetic engineering - the rakunks, pigoons, and wolvogs, as well as the Children of Crake, a humanoid race created by Jimmy's childhood friend.  Perhaps what is so frightening about the world described by Atwood via Jimmy's flashbacks is that is seems so possible - large self-contained communities owned and run by massive corporations, human obsessions with aesthetic perfection and agelessness, and even (and mot horrifying to me) the ChickieNob chickens that have been modified to grow 12 legs and no heads.  Atwood criticises several social institutions and trends by taking them to their extreme but logical extension, with compelling results.

Atwood doesn't wrap nearly everything up, and I am still uncertain about the nature of the love between Jimmy and Oryx/Oryx and Crake, and she leaves the end unresolved and big questions completely up to the reader's determination.  Sometimes I find this way of completing a novel lazy, but in this case it was perfect.  And as usual, part of the brilliance of this novel was Atwood's facility with words - creating them, twisting their meanings, and substituting them for each other.

Of course, it could be that I was in a post-apocalyptic mood, but I thought this was a fantastic novel - FAR superior to Vernon God Little which won this year.

The Blind Assassin

I finished this book a few days ago, and have spent the time reflecting that it is in many ways a perfect novel.  This is one of those books that gets better the more you think about it.

As many reviewers have noted, Margaret Atwood tells us the same story in three different ways (or four, depending on how you count them): (1) Newspaper clippings describing events, (2) Iris Chase Griffin's memoirs in her last years and (3) the story The Blind Assassin, in which an anonymous man tells a science fiction story to his lover.  These narration are interwoven throughout the novel.  All three of these types of narration have strengths and weaknesses, and while all three are describing the same era and events, the impression we get of the characters is vastly different.  None of them tells a complete story.  The reader is forced to guess and fill in the blanks throughout.  Ironically, we discover that the news clippings, perhaps the most objectively "true" are in fact the least accurate versions of what occurred.  In many ways, the  fictional story The Blind Assassin is the most accurate telling of history. 

Strikingly, the portrayal of Iris herself in these narrations varies the most.  Her passivity makes her a remarkably un-interesting character - except that she isn't nearly as passive as we might believe.  I'm not sure if we can ascribe her passivity to "the role of women at the time" - certainly Atwood has commentary on the subject, but Winnifred Griffin Prior is also a woman of the time and she is certainly not a passive participant in her life or in others'.  Thankfully for the story, Iris is in fact complex, complicated, and dynamic - and a great narrator.

I've also been pondering the story The Blind Assassin and its significance to the novel as a whole.  Is Iris the true Blind Assassin?  Is she more like the sacrificial, tongueless girl in the story?  What is the significance of the various endings to the story that are played with?  I will have to re-read this with these questions in mind.

Of course, Atwood's brilliant style shines within this structure.  I have been a fan of hers for years, but somehow did not get around to reading this one before.  She picks apart the English language in digressions, implements turns of phrase with ease and cleverness, and sucks you in.  And although she tells you the ending in the first 2 or 3 chapters, she still manages to surprise and shock.  What more can you ask for?