Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood, Bloomsbury, 2003

Maybe I’m easily scared, but Oryx and Crake terrified me. It wasn’t the alarming vision of a genetically engineered future or the stratified society so much as the aching loneliness that permeates the narrative.

Atwood has always seems to me to be an easy but satisfying read. You start one of her books and five hours later you’re finished. They are impossible to put down.

This is no exception. I was entirely immersed in her believable future where the lucky live in company controlled compounds with all mod cons and high security developing bio-miracles to enhance and prolong their lives. The narrative moves forward in two time frames, the “before” and “after” and the reader’s understanding of the what the world has become is informed equally by both. By the end, I was ready as furiously as I could, desperate to find out how this bizarre future had come about. Atwood’s imagination and attention to detail (virtual bullets aside) are the high points of a marvellously frightening tale and this is definitely one of her best.