Discovering Oryx and Crake

"Snowman wakes before dawn" by Jason Courtney

I'm usually not big into reading novels on the bestseller lists. Sometimes I will pick one up to see what all of the "hoopla" is about, but normally I read Southern. Anything written about New Orleans that isn't full of sex and sleaze, down-home boy stories, plantation creepiness, anything historic. Of recent, though, in researching for a story/novel (who knows at this point) I am attempting to write, I have read my share of post-apocalyptic novels. Lit not as tame as the Hunger Games (which I DID enjoy) but not to the point of creature-infested landscape. Yes, I am on the committee for the Shreveport Zombie Walk, 4 years as of now, just participated in a zombie "race", and dressed my 7 year old up to be in a zombie music video for a local band, but I can't read World War Z. I just can't. I guess all of my zombie hobbies are done to conquer my fears. I have watched my father return as a zombie in my dreams since I was 10 year old. Maybe this is my way to "stick it" to those pesky dreams.

So, in reading of Earth ravaged by plagues, famine, nuclear attacks, terrorism, and even the slowing of the world's rotation, I have discovered a gem that was released in 2003 by Margaret Atwood. Oryx and Crake (first full chapter). I only speculate that I was in a different "reading place" when this book came out or maybe I just had to find it at the right time...now! And wow! I'm reading a local library copy and flew through 100 pages last night, paper cuts from the crackly plastic cover and all. I didn't want to put it down and go to sleep! Thank goodness it's a thick novel! I won't even attempt to provide a synopsis for this one, I'll leave it to the pros. I hope you will pick up a copy of this fantastic novel! If you've already devoured it, I'd love to know what you thought!

"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." —The Publisher.