[Use Of Weapons]

Over the weekend I was struck down by a mystery illness (dysentery), and took the opportunity to read a book loaned to me by a work colleague: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.

It's the first Atwood I've read. I had obviously heard of her, and her reputation preceded her. However, her reputation in SF circles is somewhat at odds with her reputation in literary circles, and it was with some trepidation that I undertook OnC.

It's a wonderfully written book. Her prose is masterful, she has a wicked sense of humour, and her characterisation is superb. I enjoyed reading it.

However.

I was disappointed by the book, and this was a sense that began early, and rose to a climax at the ending. And this disappointment was brought on by some genre problems.

The issue is that Atwood is writing genre novels without being aware of the conventions that have arisen in the genre. Or perhaps, she is aware that there are conventions, and the deliberately ignores them as beneath her. Perhaps she supposes that she is a better writer than these genre hacks. For the most part, she would be correct. She is a better writer than most SF authors. However, the conventions of the genre are conventions because _they work_, and they were not created by the hacks of the genre, but by the visionaries of the genre. And I do not think that Atwood can claim to be a better writer than some of the luminaries of the genre (though she is better than some of them at some aspects of writing). And she is certainly not a better scientist than, I would say, the majority of genre readers, let alone writers.

This leads to problems of vocabulary, where Atwood has to neologise for all she is worth, creating new words for concepts familiar to genre readers and writers. And sometimes these efforts are rewarding, and take us in new directions, allow us to see things in new lights. But other times, they fall flat, and her facility for invention fails -- here, perhaps, she would be better served by merely adopting what one would consider a genre convention, with its concommitant associations, and allowing it to do some of the grunt work for her.

But the real problem with the novel, for me, is that she ends at the beginning of the story. Atwood has obviously written the novel she wanted to write, but that is not the story that I want to read. I want to know what happens _after_ her end point.

Spoiler

Snowman has discovered that there are other humans living -- the three he encounters were merely nearby. Her ending is very a 'lady or the tiger' ending -- in the larger scheme, it doesn't matter whether Snowman kills the three. The fact that they exist means there are others -- how will he deal with these? They will be better organised, in larger groups. What does he do with the Children of Crake now? Does he protect them? Try to teach them more? To me, the story has only just begun, and it is a failure of imagination, a failure of courage, not to carry it forward.

But that is obviously not the story Atwood wanted to write. So for me, the novel is ultimately frustrating, and for all the beauty of the words, the contruction of it, and the sense of immersion I got while reading, I came away finally feeling dissatisfied. I can't recommend it as a genre novel. As a literary work, there are genre novels I would recommend above it.

3 stars (out of 5)