Oryx and Crake

I finished it! I feel like a hero. This review could have just as easily been 1 star DNF after half the book. This review contains spoilers for the plot which I marked with spoiler tags but Goodreads is showing them anyway.

The good parts first. The story is sort of interesting, I liked the flashback narrative structure. I like the weirdness of Snowman, the last man from the Before Times, a terribly inadequate shepherd for his flock. I also thought the world Atwood built was interesting enough, if a bit clumsy. There's a lot of scifi tropes here that probably feel exciting if you've never read them before. I've read them before in better books.

But ugh.. mostly the narrative is plodding. A whole lot of telling when showing would be more interesting. The characters are not compelling. (As the NYT review says, "its characters all lack the chromosome that confers deeper human credibility".) It's just all kind of clumsy. I feel bad, there's something solid at the middle of this book and I have respect for Atwood. But it didn't come together.

And then one unforgiveable sin, the big reveals to the end of the plot. Why did Crake kill Oryx? Why did he kill the world? I don't know! The author doesn't tell us. The narrator doesn't either, he literally is reading his diary where he's about to write his motivation and then the page is blank. WTF? Reading online there's various theories from the obvious clues Atwood drops. But none of it is compelling. I should not be left guessing about the main moral events in the book.

And my other discomfort, with the character Oryx. Why did Atwood write her as the victim of child sex trafficking? Why did we need those child rape porny scenes? In the hands of any other author I'd think it was some awful male writer getting off on some white knight fantasy. But this is Atwood, she's not doing that. In fact she dismisses the idea. But then what is she doing? I don't know. Maybe I'm dumb and missed it but I don't think so. It doesn't help that Oryx is not a very well drawn character, hardly present for most of the book. The book would have been better giving her a voice.

Overall a forgettable book.