2013 book 154

Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake
As I noted when I read Year of the Flood last year, it had been so long since I read this book that all I remembered was a guy on a beach (which, to be fair, is a big chunk of the novel!). Anyway, I liked it a lot this go-round, even though all the women characters are kind of awful (weird, for Atwood. Oh man, remember when it was so weird for a literary writer like Atwood to write a dystopian novel?). Jimmy is ridiculously compelling, though, even with his (many) weaknesses. And I feel like the mix of science and capitalism bringing down society is kind of realistic, as these things go, even though all mentions of technology are kind of outdated already (CD-ROMs, come on). I do think it's interesting how Year of the Flood fills in a lot of the holes in this story, and can't wait to see how MaddAdam completes things. A-.