Oryx and Crake

I really enjoyed the beginning to the novel Oryx and Crake. You begin this tale with the quotes of Jonathan swift echoing in your head

“I could perhaps like others have astonished you

with strange improbable tales; but Irather chose

to relate plain matter of fact in the simplest

manner and style; because my principal design

was to inform you, and not to amuse you.”

and a short quote from Virginia Woolf

“Was there no safety? No learning by heart of

the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter,

but all was miracle and leaping from the

pinnacle of a tower into the air?”

and are then thurst into this world following a man that is called snowman. This is of course of the man's own doing, he wants to be know by the world as something else. He does of course have good reason for such a request, for he is the last of his kind. The last true human which could be taken as a view on isolationism. The man feels utterly alone next the these humanoid creatures. I did enjoy though how the character is introduced as though he is a homeless man, and is then revealed to be of time that has move on. Sort of sounds like were entering the dark tower series but roll with me. The landscape is our world but not, its as if were are forgotten. We have become the ancient ones and these knew creatures are discovering what we left. An Erie feeling creeps up my spine, as if somebody just walk over my grave. But there is this one man the “snowman” or how the last man thinks of himself “ the abominable Snowman”. Notice how he leaves off the first word to the other creatures. This man is a man of a forgotten world but it is our world, so some of the evil must seep through to these creatures that do not understand the past. He creates a god to these people, or Crake was already known. I dont know yet for I have not read that far, or maybe it never says. I always enjoy a story that doesn't start at the beginning but instead decides to start somewhere near the middle or end of a tale. The true beginning of the story is then slowly told to you through memories and by what the man say the the creatures. So you must wonder sometimes if the man is lying to the creatures which I think creates a very interesting narrative by using the falsehoods that the snowman uses the create something else for the new creatures. I cant wait to finish this tale of loss and dismay.