Monthly Archives: February 2014

Wow is Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake” from 2003 a wild, dark read. I had been bemoaning the choice of it which a member of my book club selected for us to read this month. I had put it off and put it off till the last possible minute, not wanting to read another dystopian futuristic novel full of gobbledygook and destruction. And the first 200 pages I stayed bemoaning it, but then I latched on to the story and the last 150+ pages flew by quickly. Now I’m looking to read her two others sometime in this trilogy: “The Year of the Flood” (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). So much for bemoaning it; I ended up enjoying its strange imagery and story.

I guess that’s what’s great about a book club; you read selections you might not otherwise read and it broadens your reading scope. I’m glad now to have read “Oryx and Crake” although it’s not necessarily an easy read. It challenges you in ways. It’s often harsh-mouthed and graphic, critical and over-the-top, but that’s Margaret Atwood for you — strong in her convictions, especially concerning science, the environment, and politics.

But how can I explain “Oryx and Crake,” which Atwood disputes as science fiction and calls speculative fiction because she says it doesn’t deal with “things that have not been invented yet.” Set sometime in the future, it’s about a survivor named Snowman (originally named Jimmy) who’s seemingly the last human on Earth after a virulent pandemic strikes the world. He’s left to dodge unfriendly predators and weather conditions and take care of some bioengineered humans his friend Crake once pioneered. He has painful memories of what transpired on Earth and how everyone died.

The narrative shifts back and forth from his present bleak state as a survivor to decades earlier when Earth was populated and Jimmy met his very intelligent friend Crake in grade school in the secured compound where their families lived. The story follows their lives thereafter in college and then getting jobs in corporations and their love for the same girl named Oryx, who they first saw on a porn website. I didn’t say this story would be normal, did I?

It’s a world in which biotech firms like Crake’s are creating super pills and experimenting with genetically engineered humans, and where global warming and overpopulation have taken a severe toll, especially on the pleeblands outside the secured compounds. The narrative leads up to what happened on Earth and the roles Jimmy, Oryx and Crake play. It’s suspenseful in a “Walking Dead” kind of way as the doomsday unfolds.

Although at first I feared the novel would be too dense or strange, I got into after awhile with Snowman (Jimmy) as the narrator. It turned out not to be too hard to understand or wacko. Its underlying message of the destructive direction our society is headed gets a bit heavy at times but not so far-fetched as not to be believed. Who’s not to say humans will hasten their own demise.

Apparently Atwood was in the midst of writing “Oryx and Crake” around the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, which made her stop for a few weeks. No wonder: its negative scope. By the end though I was entangled in its web and left wanting to find out more in book two. I’m sure “Oryx and Crake” will make for an interesting discussion for my book club this Tuesday evening.

How about you — have you read this novel or any of this trilogy? And what did you think? Continue reading →

Yes, I finally got on the ball and read John Green’s 2012 young adult blockbuster “The Fault in Our Stars.” I’m probably one of the last in blogger-land to have done so, and it came at a good time when I needed a quick, easy read after some of the denseness of the last novel I read and another dense one for my book club to follow.

And yes, I’m in the majority when I say I really liked “The Fault in Our Stars” and it’s a wonderful, stunning read. Even though it’s sad about two high school kids who have cancer who meet at a support group and fall in love, it’s also very beautiful and moving without being overly sentimental. Author John Green captures the teenagers and their dialogue seemingly to perfection. And the characters, Hazel and Augustus, express plenty of sardonic wit and intelligence to keep the story from falling into a depressing or cheesy hole. Green brings these characters to life and I really felt they were real people by the end who I knew and would miss.

“The Fault in Our Stars” is a book about living and dying and questioning whether one has meaning. It makes you feel what it’s like to be in a cancer kids’ shoes but it also gives them dignity and humanness too. I also liked the book’s side plot of Hazel’s quest to try to contact the author of her favorite book to find out what happened to its characters after an ambiguous ending. The quest takes Hazel and Augustus on a whirlwind adventure to Amsterdam where their connection blossoms.

I rarely read young adult novels but this one was really worth it, even though a tissue or two was required. It’s hard to really say too much about the story, other than to just rush out get the book and read it, which you must if you haven’t already. It’s made me want to read all of John Green’s other novels, too. I’m a convert now to his talent.

And I’m already thinking of the movie adaptation of “The Fault in Our Stars,” which comes out June 6. I’ve seen the trailer and I’m a bit worried it won’t be able to capture the right tone without being cheesy or fake-ish like the book does. Uh-oh. Will it live up to the book? Will the actors meet the expectations for the characters? The odds are against it, but I’ll likely see it anyways. It’s quite amazing that Shailene Woodley will play the lead roles for both upcoming movies “Divergent” and “Fault in Our Stars.” Wow she’s on a roll. I thought she was quite good in the 2011 movie “The Descendants,” so we will see if she can rise to these roles as well.

What about you — what did you think of this novel and do you plan to see the movie? Continue reading →

I was game for another dystopian futuristic novel and I hadn’t read the acclaimed author Chang-Rae Lee before so I eagerly picked up “On Such a Full Sea,” whose title is taken from a line in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”

It takes place in a wasted American landscape where three segments of society exist: the wealthy elite that live in walled-off Charter villages; the service workers in labor settlements that support the Charters; and the less fortunate who vie for survival in the open counties where it’s dangerous and difficult to get by.

The story follows a 16-year-old girl named Fan who lives in the labor settlement B-Mor that was formerly Baltimore. She’s a well-skilled tank diver who takes care of the fish supply sold to the Charters. But one day her boyfriend, Reg, who has an immunity to C-illnesses that the population doesn’t, goes missing. Soon after, Fan leaves B-Mor on a dangerous journey into the open counties to find Reg. Along the way she meets various odd characters such as Quig, a vet-turned-doctor living in a compound who barters away his patients; a murderous acrobatic family; and Miss Cathy, a wealthy woman who holds a troupe of young artistic girls in a room at her house.

But will Fan persevere and find Reg? And what happened to him? The novel reads like a tale about two folk heroes who become symbols to the troubled workers of B-Mor, which is undergoing a decline and crackdown.

You won’t find out about Fan’s and Reg’s fates till the end, but I almost wasn’t sure I was going to make it there, even though the novel is a normal 352 pages. “On Such a Full Sea” took me quite awhile to read. It’s challenging and dense on the whole and many pages don’t have any paragraph breaks.

The book’s narration by a B-Mor resident, who tells the tale of Fan, drove me crazy. At times he’s actively telling her tale, which is interesting to follow, but at other times he’s musing philosophically about this and that, which hindered the story and was generally boring to stick with. I kept wishing that Fan had narrated her own story so that it would come more to life. As it is, she is quite distanced as this folk hero, and you don’t really get to know her well.

Although the author conjures some vivid passages and images of a futuristic world in trouble, I came away from the novel feeling that it was a bit of a slog to read. The narration muted its suspense and I kept wanting it to deliver more. I had set my sights high for this novel but on the whole I was rather disappointed.

How about you — have you read this one? Or do you plan to? Continue reading →