"Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood pp. 1-134
Atwood is a cold hard bitch. All I've seen so far is miserable gloom; everything Snowman describes creates the impression of a horrible sinful world from which the only escape is indifference. Describing Jimmy's feelings with unbiased accuracy and simple direct reference to emotional content, as in the paragraph "So they'd roll a few joints and smoke them while watching the executions and the porn -- the body parts moving around on the screen in slow motion, hard and soft joining and separating, groans and screams, close-ups of clenched eyes and clenched teeth, spurts of this or that. If you switched back and forth fast, it all came to look like the same event" (p 105) in which most things are referred to in the abstract ("hard and soft" instead of specific examples), makes the experiences seem distant and irrelevant (Snowman also frequently refers to his current inability to enjoys thoughts of sex: "Sex is like drink, it's bad to start brooding about it too early in the day", p 14). Most of my impression of Jimmy is tinted by his morbid curiosity; he shows psychopathic tendencies in stating, almost exclusively, factual observations with little reference to his own opinion. This puts him in contrast to his later self, Snowman, who is invested only in his feelings and his opinion of the (terrible) world around him, demonstrated by the passage "When dealing with indigenous peoples, says the book in his head -- a more modern book this time, late twentieth century, the voice a confident female's -- you must attempt to respect their traditions and confine your explanations to simple concepts than can be understood within the contexts of their belief systems. Some earnest aid worker in a khaki jungle outfit, with netting under the arms and a hundred pockets. Condescending self-righteous cow, thinks she's got all the answers. He'd known girls like that at college, If she were here she'd need a whole new take on indigenous." (p 118): Snowman is extremely cynical and experienced, and in a way very confident, because he only bothers with immediate situations (getting drunk, staying alive, dealing with the Crakers) and is able to absolve himself of his emotional burdens by recalling the experiences of Jimmy and remembering, instead of his own feeling's, those of Jimmy, who he has intentionally dissociated from himself ("'I am not my childhood'", p 81). He also has (or had) a capable mind, evident in how he discusses abstracts and thinks about his own thoughts ("the book in his head").
Third-person perspective with a narrator like Snowman, who is often consumed by his emotions, means that a lot of the book has centered around building an understanding of who Snowman and Jimmy together are. This contributes to the underlying impression that all of the great tragedies that have occurred in the world (which have never been directly discussed; the only discussion has been in passing: "anything for a vacation from reality, under the circumstances", p 130) are not worth being invested in or having feelings about. Perhaps it's simply that Snowman feels he needs to go on living despite all the ruin around him, but perhaps he also believes that, in general, the tragedy he has experienced should not be acknowledged actively. The fact that the setting, beyond direct circumstances ("its bright eyes peering out at him from under a bush", p 57), is not described fully (that is, the locations Snowman visits are not usually given any context) also helps the reader to be lost in thoughts and memories, in much the same way as Snowman.
So far the book, in describing who Snowman\Jimmy is, has been about the early days of when Jimmy grew up and met Crake interspersed with short scenes in which Snowman reflects on the present and what was caused by some event in between. Oryx has been discussed, but never properly introduced. These facts together lead me to believe that in Snowman's history of the past, Jimmy will properly meet Oryx, and given the references to "the Children of Oryx, [and] the Children of Crake" (p 116), she will perhaps take a greater interest in Crake than Jimmy. The fact that the strange species of perfect humans who Snowman describes as "placid, like animated statues" (p 121) are called the Children of Crake leads me to believe that somehow meeting Oryx relates to Crake gaining a lot of widespread power. I'm very interested to know more about Oryx (she is the one thought that seems to calm Snowman); I find Crake's character fascinating, he seems to have the same removed cynicism that Jimmy has, but better self-control and force of personality. I think there will be some sort of love triangle between the three, and Jimmy and Crake will have a great rivalry.
In the long run, I can't say for sure what the purpose of the book is, but the story and background are enthralling and I'm excited to see what could cause the horrible state that Snowman lives in (the fact that Atwood uses flashbacks as the main method of plot development means that every scene with Snowman is foreshadowing -- exciting!).
