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Well....I always feel a little weird when my reaction to a book is so different from everyone else's. I tried to read this once when it first came out and couldn't. I'm glad I read it this time because now I know why I couldn't read it: great idea, poorly executed. That about sums it up for me. The characters seemed two-dimensional, everything fell flat and struck me as caricature-ish, and I resented the...stereotypes. Sorry, Mags, but Asperger's is so much more than over-achieving intellect combined with social ineptitude. And pit bulls aren't by nature likely to rip you to shreds.

Everything seemed so painfully obvious to me--I might have liked this book if it was someone's first novel. But it's her 800th (or something like that) and everyone thinks she's the shit. Except for me, apparently. I liked Cat's Eye and The Handmaid's Tale, but I read those when I was 13 and 14 years old... Maybe I would have liked this as a 13-year old, as well?

I get the "science" she was trying to represent with her genetically engineered combo-animals, but I felt condescended to. When scientists do these types of things, they are not literally combining two disparate species. Gider/Spoat? Really? Indeed there is work going on to get dairy animals to produce milk that can be spun into super strong yet super lightweight threads because some spider gene is in there, but the animal is still very much a dairy animal. Does Atwood really have that little faith in her audience's imaginations that she has to spell it out like that? I felt like she had a mix'n'match wheel on her wall-- make that two such wheels--one for animal splices and one for social behaviors. The whole thing with the Crakers was just too cartoonish for me.

This review must sound really negative. Why don't I just give the book one star? Because it had its moments. it wasn't pure torture and I'm grateful I didn't have to waste more than a weekend on it. Anyway, I actually enjoyed Snowman Jimmy's relationship with Crake's "children."