The characters in Margaret Atwood's fierce new novel, Life Before Man (life after man is the implied gallows joke), can't seem to get through a day without obsessing on extinction. Unlike Doris Lessing's fixation on future cataclysm, Atwood's people … look back to the dinosaur's prophetic tale. Although nobody knows exactly why the giant lizzards didn't make it, Life Before Man posits the notion that obsolescence may simply be built into the process of life. We're not doomed because we're irresponsible and wicked; we're just doomed. Quel consolation.
Life Before Man is full of variations on the theme of extinction, but whereas total obliteration of the species has a rather limited mirth-yield, Atwood the satirist shoots mainly at smaller scale extinctions—monogamy, repressed feelings, polite conversations, and novels of manners that describe these fossils. Though far from extinct, the rotten childhood, failed marriage, failed affair, failed fuck, successful suicide, and cancer death also figure in the story. Life Before Man is wry, pitiless, and sometimes moving. But there are problems.
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