Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood

Buy the book here.

*****

Plot: Snowman, a lone survivor of a human extinction event struggles to survive while reminiscing on how it all came to be. He is in charge of caring for a group of genetically-altered humanoids called "the Children of Crake."

     Fantastic! This is the first book I have read by Margaret Atwood, and I can't wait to read more. Oryx and Crake is a deftly handled cross between the Adam & Eve story, a post-apocalyptic horrorland, Orwellian distopia, conspiracy theory, and memoir. The ending leaves the reader wanting more from this fantastic yet all-too-familiar world, and fortunately Atwood has delivered with a sequel, The Year of the Flood.
     Characterization is handled amazingly well, considering what she gave herself to work with. Without giving much away, I will mention that one character is a pure-science genius asshole, another refuses to say a bad thing about anyone, ever, there are environmentalist fanatics, a father who routinely forgets his son's birthday, and the main character is highly unsympathetic as well. But for all that, and likely because of all that, it remains very believable. The reader finds him/herself relating to Snowman/Jimmy's basic selfish, ugly humanity.
     The most chilling part of the story, for me at least, are the pigoons. Pigoons are pigs that were genetically engineered to grow human organs. Encountering them in a laboratory setting was unnerving enough for me, but then I have a slight fear of pigs (thank you, Lord of the Flies). When Snowman crosses paths with them in the wild, things get zombie-like quickly, but pigoons are smart and fast, so it's worse.
     You absolutely must read this book.

A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens

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Buy the movie version.

*****

Plot: A mean and stingy old man is haunted by a series of ghosts on Christmas Eve, causing him to change his entire life for the better. Yay, happy ending!

     Let me start by saying that I love Christmas. The very idea of Christmas makes me all kinds of warm and happy inside. I also love Charles Dickens. His style of writing, his nomenclature, his intricate plots that always, always work out without anything left hanging: all provide a rich and rewarding reading experience. Being a novella, A Christmas Carol doesn't have an intricate plot. It's more similar to a fairy tale than a typical Dickens novel. We're all familiar with the plot; we've seen it interpreted a million different ways from The Muppets to Doctor Who to every sitcom in existence. And like a true fairy tale, it never gets old and the moral is rarely lost in translation.
     Most recently, I read A Christmas Carol during my breaks at work over the Thanksgiving rush (I work at a grocery store). It certainly helped to keep me in good spirits. I cannot possibly praise this book enough, but it also feels unnecessary to comment on it, considering how thoroughly this story has permeated our culture, our language, and especially the last two months of every calendar year. And so I won't comment on it. I will simply leave this here to encourage you to read it.

Passage

by Connie Willis

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*****

Plot: A woman is researching near-death experiences.

I didn't put much in the plot because, despite my "no guarantee concerning spoilers" policy, I really don't want to give anything away with this one. Here, I'll just quote what the back of the book says:

"Dr. Joanna Lander is a psychologist specializing in near-death experiences. She is about to get help from a new doctor with the power to give her the chance to get as close to death as anyone can. A brilliant young neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright has come up with a way to manufacture the near-death experience using a psychoactive drug. Joanna's first NDE is as fascinating as she imagined - so astounding that she knows she must go back, if only to find out why that place is so hauntingly familiar. But each time Joanna goes under, her sense of dread begins to grow, because part of her already knows why the experience is so familiar, and why she has every reason to be afraid. Yet just when Joanna thinks she understands, she's in for the biggest surprise of all - a shattering scenario that will keep you feverishly reading until the final climactic page."

"Feverishly reading" is right. This book is 780 pages long, and I finished it in 9 days. It's addictive. Even when I did walk away from it, my mind never did. To a certain extent, even almost a week after finishing it, I'm still just as much engrossed. I want to read it again, to spot clues I missed the first time through. While it holds many stylistic similarities to the other Connie Willis book I've read, To Say Nothing of the Dog, the subject matter is completely different and the ending is much less satisfying. At the end of this book, you're left hanging. Many questions remain unanswered, impossible to answer. It's the nature of the subject matter, really. Willis could have gone on to explain the afterlife or lack thereof in great detail, à la What Dreams May Come or Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but that wouldn't have been appropriate. The whole concept of Passage is not knowing. It's all about unanswered questions and how we cope with knowing that we can't know.

I recommend this book to everyone who plans on dying. If you don't plan on dying, you're in some serious denial and I recommend this book to you even more urgently.