ORYX AND CRAKE (Margaret Atwood) - January 6/13

Well, this was certainly a dud. It's a kind of interesting premise - it details the exploits of the last surviving man in a post-apocalyptic wasteland - but Atwood squanders it with endless flashbacks and prose that's often laughably flowery. (As I told my brother, it's kind of like, just tell me a story, dammit!) There are a few good twists here and there, but the characters are dull and the book is just too uneventful. This might have made for a decent short story but it feels awfully padded out at almost 400 (!) pages. And let's not even get started on the end, which is comically abrupt. (The guy sees three other humans and it just ends!) *1/2 out of ****