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Oryx and Crake cover art

Oryx and Crake

Written by: Margaret Atwood
Narrated by: Campbell Scott
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Publisher's Summary

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.

©2002 O.W. Toad, Ltd. (P)2003 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

What the critics say

"Absorbing...expertly rendered...Virtuosic storytelling [is] on display." (The New York Times)
"Chesterton once wrote of the 'thousand romances that lie secreted in the Origin of the Species.' Atwood has extracted one of the most hair-raising of them all, and one of the most brilliant." (Publishers Weekly)

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What listeners say about Oryx and Crake

Average Customer Ratings
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great book, so-so narrator

I love this story so much, it's very eerie and hits pretty close to home in today's society. The narrator is only okay. It was a little monotone, which makes an interesting story a little more boring than it should be, in my opinion. When I read this book for the first time, I couldn't put it down. The first few chapters of the audiobook, however, I found myself yawning and zoning out, so that's a bit of a shame. It got better as the story itself picked up, though.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

In case you'd forgotten that Atwood is a hurricane

of speculative fiction, here is a tale full of strange and sickeningly familiar futures, deeply flawed technocratic geniuses, genetic contortionism, and a capitalist world rocketing towards the post-post-apocalyse.
Terrifying. Beautiful. Dryly hilarious. Tragic.
Heck, it's Atwood at her finest, making us laugh and whimper at the future while holding a bitter mirror to the present.

Also, the narrator is as perfectly dry as Atwood herself, and suits the story well. (Although I cannot understand why he keeps pronouncing "feral" as "fearal". I twitched every time)

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Refund please

Couldn't stand it. Want a refund. Didn't like the story, nor the narration. Turns out I can't stand Margaret Atwood.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Not the Handmaids Tail

you have to like being in someone's head and still not getting the story. Sorry Maggie...this one is a flop.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Didn't hold me.

I could not finish this book, I regret buying it as it is clearly not a genre for me. I was so bored that I would just stop hearing it. This feels like a short story that was lengthened into a novel.

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2 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Just ok

This is my first Margaret Atwood read. Without spoiling the story: The change that some characters underwent did not feel natural. Or maybe they just changed too quickly toward the end of the story so it felt unnatural because it was kind of sudden. The story kept me interested though. It was good enough that I'll try another of the author's books.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • 2019-04-10

My favorite author!

Margaret Atwood never fails me, I have read all her literature! Amazing story teller! I recommend this book to anyone who likes an unpredictable storyline.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

just another shitty sci fi novel

I don't know why Margaret Atwood is so highly regarded as "literature." This is just a mediocre sci fi novel.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Engrossing story and characters

The story slowly unwinds and unfolds and completely entranced me - once I was past the first few chapters (which were difficult to get through, probably because the Snowman scenes are initially lacking in context). The narrator's calm style corresponds nicely to the protagonist's voice.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Not very exciting

I read this after the other 2 books in trilogy. It’s kind of boring and the narrator sounds ridiculous making Oryx the female characters voice. It’s not a book I would recommend.

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