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  • Oryx and Crake

  • MaddAddam Trilogy, Book 1
  • By: Margaret Atwood
  • Narrated by: John Chancer
  • Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (1,670 ratings)
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Oryx and Crake cover art

Oryx and Crake

By: Margaret Atwood
Narrated by: John Chancer
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Summary

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, 2003.
Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, 2004.

Margaret Atwood's classic novel, The Handmaid's Tale, is about the future. Now, in Oryx and Crake, the future has changed: it's much worse. The narrator of this riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he's 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. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories?

©2003 Margaret Atwood (P)2014 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd.

Critic reviews

"Rigorous in its chilling insights and riveting in its fast-paced 'what if' dramatization, Atwood's superb novel is as brilliantly provocative as it is profoundly engaging." ( Booklist)

What listeners say about Oryx and Crake

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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Story
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Engrossing, disturbing, amusing, entertaining

What a story this is. It is quite hard to review without giving away the plot too much but I listened to this in 2 days and would happily go back to the start right now. The Narration is first class, along with the plot and the characters. The story leaves you thinking about it when you are not listening, wondering "could that really happen?" to which the answer is most often yes it could. Highly, recommend this. I will remember this one for a long time to come and probably shudder as parts of it become true in the future.

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58 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Warning - descriptions of child abuse

Once the disturbing graphic scenes started I fast forwarded through them - but was on edge that there may be more so couldn't finish the book. Films with adult sexual content come with a warning. Why not this book?
If the author wishes to make a point by using this subject then that is her choice but there should be an official warning regarding what was explicit content in this book. Not impressed.

I read a handful of reviews before and then some after and found a reviewer with a similar view to mine. Wish I'd read it before. Although it shouldn't be left to a reviewer to leave a warning.

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50 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

I tried

I really tried hard to listen to this, because the idea seemed a good one. Who knows, the storyline might even be brilliant. I've had to guess. But I couldn't force myself to listen to one more word; the narrator seems limited in his voices to the "melancholy" one and the "whining" one and it was a choice between stopping listening and pulling my own ears off.

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44 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A book of ideas in sci-fi, not space opera.

I'm not familiar with Margaret Atwood's other work. Although clearly it fits into the sci-if genre, it is not a space opera. It is the sci-if of ideas and their effects upon society. The story does move back and forth over time, but in a limited way and not difficult to follow. The world is not ours, but a future or alternate version. I've just finished listening to this and shall move straight onto the middle book of the trilogy. Atwood has created a strange but familiar universe that is rigid and controlled. It is linear from childhood, but friendship can bridge the paths and the years.

John Chancer is probably not my ideal narrator (I prefer a deeper tone), but he does a very good job here. He manages to define the characters without using a range of accents.

Probably because Atwood is Canadian she uses quite a number of British rather than American terms (eg bum instead of ass or butt) which is a pleasant change.

Oryx and Crake is a great change of gear from the more run-of-the-mill detective or thriller novels that I like. Worth a listen if you enjoy a change. I did.

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33 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Compulsive Listen

With each exciting and beneficial step the human race takes in the development of biotechnology, there are far-reaching risks and dangers, never explicitly explored. This novel explores them. The result is a desperately believable and very close future that Margaret Atwood opens up before us with appalling clarity. We follow the tale of an unexceptional, flawed individual who becomes the unwilling witness to and agent of perplexing, yet world-changing, events. Jimmy has had a troubled young life: nothing prepares him for his pivotal role in the future of our planet. This book is a compulsive listen, the inevitable logic of the plot locking inexorably into place as the awful truth unravels.

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27 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Ca
  • 09-12-20

STILL NO WARNING!!!!

I DECIDED THAT SINCE AUDIBLE HAS NEITHER EMAILED OR PUT ANY WARNING ON THIS BOOK THAT I WOULD DO IT MYSELF
"WARNING"
THIS BOOK CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT OF CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION

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26 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Interesting and creative story

Where does Oryx and Crake rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

One of my better " reads".

What did you like best about this story?

The story unfolds in flash back form, something has happened , vast swathes of the earths population have disappeared and those that survive don't seem quite human, ,but what and who is to blame ?

Any additional comments?

Be warned this is the first in a trilogy and the story does not resolve itself in this book one, so you're basically committing yourself to reading ( listening too) all three. The story does meander, at times you begin to wonder what is the point of some of the tributaries you end up exploring . I however made it to the end of number three so was suitably gripped, although I did feel by book three it was beginning to plod along a little predictably, book one ( this one ) is definitely the best.

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24 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Oryx and Crake (Unabridged)

This is really worth listening to. Several important contemporary issues are explored in science fiction form, and the narrator delivers the story very well indeed.

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Not for the faint of heart

I really like Margaret Atwood, and what I've read of this series, it's well read and well written, but there are some dark themes in this one and I nearly had to turn it off a few times. I made it through and I suppose it was worth it, but I would've liked a warning before I dove in.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

A slow burner but worth persevering with

Took me a while to get into, and the plot is deliberately opaque to begin with, but it's worth persevering with. An interest idea of the future - and Chancer reads it well.

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11 people found this helpful