'Oryx and Crake' by Margaret Atwood

Afterthoughts ~ 27 Oct 2006

Jimmy, aka Snowman, lives in a futuristic world where dreams come true with money and values are non-existant. And the fittest n smartest wants to rule the world in the name of peace and order, whereby sex is only for the innocent purposes of creation and procreation. Would the new world be any better?

I feel deeply about this book. It's a distant future which we can all identify with now. Thrilling and a page-turner, though I expected more from the ending. Still, it's a good read.

My rating for this book: ****
Awards: Man Booker Prize Shortlist 2003; Orange Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2004

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Unforgettable Quotes
[taken from Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, Virago Press, London, 2004.]

"They had to be burned," he said, "to keep it from spreading."...
"What from spreading?"
"The disease." ...
"If I have a cough, will I be burned up?"
"Most likely," said his father, turning over the page.
- p.22, Oryx and Crake

P.S., she'd said. I have taken Killer with me to liberate her, as I know she will be happier living a wild, free life in the forest.- p. 69, Oryx and Crake

'This was how Jimmy first encountered Shakespeare - through Anna K.'s rendition of Macbeth.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death,
...'
- p.97, Oryx and Crake

"As a species we're doomed by hope, then?"
"You could call it hope. That, or desperation."
"But we're doomed without hope, as well," said Jimmy.
"Only as individuals," said Crake cheerfully.
"Well, it sucks."
"Jimmy, grow up."
- p.139, Oryx and Crake

"You can't buy it, but it has a price," said Oryx. "Everything has a price."
- p.163, Oryx and Crake

Crake still had a collection of fridge magnets, but they were different notes. No more science quips.

Where God is, Man is not.
There are two moons, the one you can see and the one you can't.
Du musz dein Leben andern.
We understand more than we know.
I think, therefore.
To stay human is to break a limitation.
Dreams steals from its lair towards its prey.
- p.354, Oryx and Crake

"Immortality," said Crake, "is a concept. If you take 'mortality' as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then 'immortality' is the absence of such fear. Babies are immortal. Edit out the fear, and you'll be.."
-p.356, Oryx and Crake

... Crake said once, "Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain?"
- p.375, Oryx and Crake

"Change can be accommodated by any system depending on its rate," Crake used to say. "Touch your head to a wall, nothing happens, but if the same head hits the same wall at ninety miles an hour, it's red paint. We're in a speed tunnel, Jimmy. When the water's moving faster than the boat, you can't control a thing."
- p.398, Oryx and Crake

They noticed the remains of Crake lying on the ground, but as they had never seen Crake when alive, they believed Snowman when he told them this was thing of no importance - only a sort of husk, only a sort of pod. It would have been a shock to them to have witnessed their creator in his present state.
- p.410, Oryx and Crake

-------------------------------------------------------

Resources

Award Mention:
http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/opf/books.php4?bookid=158

Book Site:
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/atwood/oryxandcrake/rg.html

Available in:
NLB libraries, SP Main Library, major bookstores.

'The History of Love' by Nicole Krauss

Afterthoughts

A genre of its kind to unravel the mystery of a long lost love sealed in a brown paper bag of manuscripts that lives, gets lost, is found and then drifts through decades. Served in light-hearted language, peppered with its namesake, love, the prose gives this tingling feeling of thrill as the characters try hard to piece up the jigsaw of their relationships and amend their past through the History of Love.

The title could be deemed as passe but its content is no trash. I like it for its simple yet complex portray of its ordinary characters. No matter how The History of Love undergoes the ages, the changes of names & places, it lives through and stays true to its root. Love.

My rating for this book: ***1/2
Award Mention: British Book Award 2006 (Richard & Judy's Book Club); Orange Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2006

------------------------------------------

The Reason to Quote

'I was named after every girl in a book called The History of Love.'(Alma)

and many other interesting ones I can't name offhand.

Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

------------------------------------------

Resources

Award Mention
www.orangeprize.co.uk/opf/shortlist.php4?bookid=190

Available in NLB libraries, SP library, and major bookstores