The Heart Goes Last

by Margaret Atwood

Hardcover, 2015

Call number

SPEC FICT ATW

Publication

Nan A. Talese (2015), Edition: First Edition, 320 pages

Description

"Margaret Atwood puts the human heart to the ultimate test in an utterly brilliant new novel that is as visionary as The Handmaid's Tale and as richly imagined as The Blind Assassin. Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in. for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system. Once their month of service in the prison is completed, they can return to their "civilian" homes. At first, this doesn't seem like too much of a sacrifice to make in order to have a roof over one's head and food to eat. But when Charmaine becomes romantically involved with the man who lives in their house during the months when she and Stan are in the prison, a series of troubling events unfolds, putting Stan's life in danger. With each passing day, Positron looks less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled"--… (more)

Media reviews

But then a narrative that has been taut, dread-inducing and psychologically tense careers off the road, skids into the woods, hits its head, loses its memory and emerges as a strange quasi-sex romp concerned almost exclusively with erotic power, kinky impulses and the perversity of desire.
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“The Heart Goes Last” wrestles with many of the same themes that have preoccupied Ms. Atwood for decades, such as sexism, the dangers of unbridled greed and the risky moral terrain that comes with technological progress.
Though Atwood is obviously delivering a serious lesson about societal greed and human exploitation, it’s frankly an amazing achievement how jovial The Heart Goes Last is from start to Shakespearean-style comedic finish. The novel is certainly a dystopian effort that belongs on the same hallowed
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list as Brave New World, 1984 and Atwood’s own masterpiece, The Handmaid’s Tale, but it also manages to be a whole lot of quirky, poppy fun, without ever once undermining its core message.
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The further one reads, the less clear the novel becomes on a philosophical level. The narrative is riveting (if occasionally so ridiculous as to remind the reader that perhaps we’re not meant to take it entirely seriously), and the characters deepen as time goes on, moving from broad types to
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sympathetic (if not entirely likable) individuals. But throughout, there is a sense of larger purpose, a deeper motivation at work. Part of this is a function of the conspiracy in which Charmaine and Stan find themselves “linchpin” figures, but the overarching narrative control – layers within layers, manipulations within manipulations – comes to feel like the work of the writer herself. By the time the novel concludes, one is left with an image of Atwood holding all the puppet strings, orchestrating every event. And grinning widely.
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Margaret Atwood’s future holds little cheer. Dystopian sex romp The Heart Goes Last comes off as jaded, contemptuous...Stan and Charmaine elicit little (Charmaine) to no (Stan) sympathy. Two self-serving, foolish, and facile jerks stand at the heart of Heart. The comedy ridicules them; it’s
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at their expense. And because their unappetizing characteristics encourage onlookers to grow indifferent to their antics and dilemmas, their fates — good, bad, or more of the same — matter not in the least. Dystopian tales rely on readers caring or identifying with about the oppressed and victimized. If that’s taken away, so is the tale’s power to move, provoke, and command attention.
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her latest book, The Heart Goes Last, began life as a series of four episodes on the digital-winning platform Byliner in 2012-13. Now expanded into a full-length novel, the story inhabits the kind of plausible dystopia familiar to admirers of Atwood’s brand of speculative fiction. It’s more
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overtly comic than her most recent books, the MaddAddam trilogy, though it treats the same broad themes...It’s gloriously madcap, though the heightened comic tone keeps the reader at one remove from her characters, whom we only ever know by their first names. There are poignant moments, but if the level of emotional engagement feels more superficial here, Atwood compensates with pace and comic timing; you only pause in your laughter when you realise that, in its constituent parts, the world she depicts here is all too horribly plausible.
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Library's review

This book did not capture my imagination the way that Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy did. The characters did not seem as fully dimensional, and the plot seemed to drag on drearily at times (maybe that was an intentional mood creating device). Atwood does manage to pursue an interesting "speculative"
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mode in a time frame closer to present time than the post-apocalyptic world of MaddAddam. And I was pleased, somewhat, by the ending, which tries to offer a brief, last-minute glimpse of possible struggle against authoritarian social collapse.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member CatherineBurkeHines
Someone needs to write a thesis on the symbolism of poultry in the works of Margaret Atwood.
LibraryThing member kalky
Imagine my excitement when I received an early reviewer copy of Margaret Atwood's new novel! Imagine how thrilled I was to read this description: "Margaret Atwood puts the human heart to the ultimate test in an utterly brilliant new novel that is as visionary as The Handmaid’s Tale and as richly
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imagined as The Blind Assassin."

I settled in... I drank up the first few chapters. Dystopian world. Sure, it's been done SO MUCH lately, but Atwood is one of the original masters, and the world created for THE HEART GOES LAST seems so much more plausible than any others I've read recently. *Plus* it's Margaret-freaking-Atwood so the writing is just so good!

And then the book continues. And then I have to force myself to keep reading it. And I realize that I don't like any of the characters. That's not a deal-breaker for me. I don't have to like everyone if there's a great plot, good writing, and it's a book that makes me think. I slog on...

But then I STILL have to force myself to read it. The plot becomes transparent. I don't really think about anything in the book (although I'm sure there's a message there because it's Margaret-freaking-Atwood) because it's all so ridiculous. As I read, I just keep rolling my eyes and sighing like a teenager subjected to the company of undesirables.

Then the book ends in a completely predictable yet unsatisfying manner.

I'm so disappointed.

My thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy of the ebook in exchange for my unbiased review.
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LibraryThing member jillrhudy
An extraordinary novel, and a scary-believable dystopia. I was thoroughly engrossed. If Charmaine is less likable than Stan, she is much more adapted for survival. Stan has only one advantage: a living blood relative.
LibraryThing member nivramkoorb
Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors. His Maddadam trilogy is one of the best series of books that I have ever read. She followed that up with 'The Stone Mattress" which was excellent. This book if it was not done by Margaret Atwood might have gotten a slightly higher rating. This is a
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dystopian future novel dealing with a severe economic downturn and the way our society could go. The beginning was excellent with a good sinister feel to it, but then she introduced a sexual fantasy element with robots and the plot got a little too "silly" for me. It was entertaining and introduced some good satire about our society. Just not one of her best.
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LibraryThing member TerriBooks
I never really "got" this book. Was it some sort of dystopian future? Or a comedy? The whole "Elvises" and "Marilyns" thing was just so weird. And maybe I missed something, but I never understood how putting half the population in prison makes an economy work. The whole thing just never made much
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sense to me. And did have a warm response to Stan and Charmaine, but they never developed in a way that made me like them better. Overall I was disappointed.
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LibraryThing member KateVane
You know how in novels we generally get to follow the heroic ones? And by extension to imagine ourselves in that position, being heroic? Atwood turns that on its head in this satire. Charmaine just wants everything to be clean and nice. Stan wants things to work out, for once. They want life to be
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simple. Like most of us.

At the beginning of the novel they’re living out of their car, having lost their jobs and their home after yet another financial crisis. Life is bleak and frightening, but they are offered a chance of escape. A prison has long been seen as the saviour of a deprived community, bringing with it secure and well-paid jobs. Consilience is an innovation. If prisons needs communities and communities need prisons, why not have a place where people are both? One month inmate, the next citizen. The only catch, they have to sign up for life, and once in, there is no way out.

In Consilience, Stan and Charmaine get to live every other month in a pastel, idealised, 1950s kind of a world, drenched in the positive thinking of modern corporate life (‘Shout out for the Brussels Sprouts team!’). Stan and Charmaine are safe and well fed and happy to play by the rules. And yet –

This book is bright and fast and funny but behind the humour it’s bursting with ideas. And that title. What a great title.
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LibraryThing member Isisunit
I would like to thank Doubleday Books & NetGalley for granting me a copy of this e-book to read in exchange for an honest review. Though I received this e-book for free that in no way impacts my review.

Goodreads Teaser:Living in their car, surviving on tips, Charmaine and Stan are in a desperate
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state. So, when they see an advertisement for Consilience, a ‘social experiment’ offering stable jobs and a home of their own, they sign up immediately. All they have to do in return for suburban paradise is give up their freedom every second month – swapping their home for a prison cell. At first, all is well. But then, unknown to each other, Stan and Charmaine develop passionate obsessions with their ‘Alternates,’ the couple that occupy their house when they are in prison. Soon the pressures of conformity, mistrust, guilt and sexual desire begin to take over.

Margaret Atwood delivers another novel of deep interest and entertainment, which will leave the reader contemplating so many things long after they've put the book down. Stan and Charmaine are you're typical middle-class Americans. At least they used to be until everything fell apart. Watching how they each dealt with the daily pressure of finding themselves adrift in a world they no longer recognize is almost like staring into a mirror out of the corner of your eye. You can imagine yourself in their shoes and wonder how you'd be reacting to their situation.

I found Charmaine to be a slightly annoying ninny. She's constantly quoting her grandmother, and the quotes are all just ridiculous platitudes. She avoids anything dark or depressing, shoving all her bad memories into a place she never ventures. Her perpetually upbeat attitude in the face of extreme uncertainty annoyed me, and left me wondering about her husband Stan since he signed on for a life with this ray of blinding sunshine. Yet Stan was a more relatable character for me. He is more upfront and honest about his thoughts and feelings, even if only to himself. Yet sometimes he overloads and does lash out, which makes sense in the story and helped make him feel more realistic than Charmaine to me.

The pacing and arc of the story was smooth, attesting to Atwood's innate storytelling skills. While this book isn't as clearly dystopian as some of her other stories, it's heading that way, which makes it all the more frightening because what she created feels far to close to real for me. The messed up world she envisioned feels as if it's only a few steps away from where we stand now, and there are so many people ready to step in and create their own personal playground out of the entire world.

Although this tale reads as fiction, it certainly touches on highly charged current events, bringing things to light that engenders serious thought. Despite the fictional aspect of the story this is in many ways a very thought provoking novel, and one that will linger in my mind for some time to come. But then that has always been the case with books by the eminently talented Margaret Atwood.
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LibraryThing member Estramir
Margaret Atwood explores another possible future dystopia in 'The Heart Goes Last'. The writing is less florid and more direct than some of her other works, but I found it a wonderful mixture of dark and light. The author shows a great talent for finding humour in the grimmest circumstances. Though
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we are presented with quite a few moral dilemmas, the overriding theme of the book is personal freedom, something people are always seeking but often cannot cope with. Obviously the best solution is to all live in a prison, but one where we feel free, or maybe not. Charmaine and Stan are such believable characters, filled with their very human faults, uncertainties and complications and M.Atwood is one of the rare writers who can effortlessly talk in a male or female voice. Brilliant!
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LibraryThing member thewanderingjew
The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood, narrators, Cassandra Campbell, Mark Deakins
The premise of the book seems to be that the world has descended into a state of turmoil; all hell has broken loose on the ground with joblessness, poverty, starvation, and lawlessness growing in many cities. However,
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those who can afford to rise above the fray, actually do. They live in floating cells/pods, in their own self-contained fully functioning societies, and apparently, they are all now preoccupied with creative ways to satisfy their sexual needs, and to this end, the idea of robots servicing their needs is the next Silicon Valley get-rich idea, albeit, not in Silicon Valley.

A town called Concilience (combining the word convict with resilience) is created by the Positron Project. The establishment of this controlled community will supposedly eliminate civil disobedience and create a better world by providing full employment and equal opportunity. The deterioration of society in certain parts of the country will no longer be an issue with the growth of these cooperative environments. Everyone will be taken care of fairly. In these new communities, residents will spend half their time in the Positron prison and half their time in a luxurious home. An alternate family will share the home and prison cell every other month. Their lives will be completely controlled and all needs will be provided for them. They will be given jobs, one of the three choices they select, and although they will be at the mercy of the administrators for all decisions, there should be no reason to complain. There is one problematic codicil, once they sign on, they may never leave. The environment of the 1950’s was determined to be the most peaceful and comfortable and so everything in this created community is in that style right down to the music and clothing, food and television shows. It seems like a “Leave It To Beaver” perfect world combined with “Father Knows Best”.

In the end, however, some of those who had previously not been tempted to do anything wrong or immoral, were soon tempted to be unfaithful, and they broke the rules, possibly because of the ho hum, boring existence they were forced to endure day after day. In addition, greed somehow reared its ugly head, once again, with some wanting more than they were entitled to and more than they already had. Perhaps a natural consequence of being human is stretching the envelope and tempting fate. This old saying was also in evidence, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

In truth, although the imagination of Atwood was still feverishly at work, and she created an unusual narrative, infused with humor, albeit obsessed with a world that wanted nothing more than satisfying sex, it was disappointing. It did make me wonder, though, with all of the stress today, on sex enhancing drugs, and drugs that induce pleasure, are we not, perhaps, going in that direction? Perhaps Margaret Atwood is a visionary once again, as she was in “The Handmaid’s Tale”, with the idea of surrogate mothers. (I hope my remark is tongue in cheek and not a foretelling of the future.) I stuck with the book because of my respect for the author, but the plot seemed implausible and the sexual preoccupation seemed ridiculous. It was hard to take seriously, a woman who falls madly in love with a teddy bear in a medical procedure gone wrong, and Elvis impersonators as spies and vigilantes, simply did not capture my interest.

On the positive side, the character development was very detailed and the narrators were excellent, getting into the character’s heads and playing their roles well. Also, I did not realize that this was part of a series of books, and I did not read the first three, (“I’m Starved For You”, “Choke Collar” and “Erase Me”), so perhaps if I had, I would have had a different reaction.
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LibraryThing member mcelhra
The country is in a deep depression and Stan and Charmaine have been forced to live in their car, a dangerous situation that offers them little sleep as they are forced to constantly move the car from place to place to avoid gangs who want to steal the car and who knows what else. Charmaine earns a
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little money working as a waitress. One day at work, she sees an ad for the Positron Project in the community of Consilience. Residents of the community agree to spend their time alternating between their picture perfect home the Project provides for them and a non-violent prison, switching every month. Consilience = Cons + Resilience. What could possibly go wrong? It turns out a lot. Predictably, the Positron Project is not what it seems on the surface.

Every resident has a job both inside and outside of the prison. Stan works in a scooter repair shop in the community and as a chicken farmer inside the prison. Charmaine works in the community bakery on the outside and as Medication Administrator in the prison. Charmaine is so sweet and naive that the bad things she does both in both places were really surprising to me. Yet, I still liked her and even felt sorry for her. Stan, on the other hand, just rubbed me the wrong way even though truly he was mostly the victim in this story.

The atmosphere in this book is a cross between an Orwell novel and The Stepford Wives (which happens to be one of my all-time favorite books). Of course, being an Atwood novel, it reminded me somewhat of The Handmaid’s Tale but in atmosphere only. The Heart Goes On is definitely original and not a repeat of the Handmaid’s Tale. There is more dark humor and I love dark humor when it’s done right.

The last bit of the book involving Elvis impersonators – yes, Elvis impersonators – went a little off the rails for me and is what kept me from giving this book five stars. However, the very ending of the book stunned me. It was the kind of ending that left me thinking about the book for days afterward. This book would make an excellent book club selection for that reason.

I’m a huge Atwood fan and this book did not disappoint.
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LibraryThing member gbelik
Charmaine and Stan are an unemployed couple living in their car when they hear of a closed community offering a comfortable,secure life, where they would alternate between months of being inmates at a prison and months of being the support staff for this same prison. They join up and thus begins a
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story that becomes more and more bizarre, for both our couple and ourselves as readers. There are sexual shenanigans and evil capitalists and it all seems made up as we go along. No heft here at all.
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LibraryThing member natsalvo
Margaret Atwood is no stranger to writing, as this talented Canadian author has won the Booker Prize and been shortlisted for countless others. She has written over 40 novels but I am a stranger to her work and The Heart Goes Last is my first introduction to this prolific writer. The book was
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excellent and it has convinced me to delve deeper into her amazing catalogue of works.

The Heart Goes Last is about a young couple named Stan and Charmaine. The pair are initially happy and wealthy but they are subsequently hit hard when a financial crisis takes place in their American town. They are forced to live in their car and fight off other people who are also desperately poor. Stan is told he is overqualified for jobs (even though he will accept almost anything, but he does draw the line at engaging in criminal activity with his brother, Conor) and Charmaine makes money as a barmaid. The pair share a grim existence until they happen upon an ad for Consilience.

The term Consilience comes from the combination of “cons” and “resilience”. The pair sign up and think everything will be hunky dory. In exchange for a house and jobs in a tranquil setting reminiscent of some starry-eyed retro period like the 1950s, the pair are forced to give up their freedoms every second month. On the alternate months they – like countless others – will be imprisoned in a gaol while another couple with live in their house. It’s a strange set-up but it’s also a social experiment that is engaging in some more sinister elements.

The novel is a cautionary tale attempting to warn readers to be careful what they wish for. It’s also an excellent social commentary that uses aspects of satire and comedy to riff on an almost real-life existence. In many ways this book is reminiscent of Ben Elton’s “Dead Famous” in its pithy observations of modern life. Atwood is also very clever, witty and unique as she weaves together her beautiful and well-constructed prose.

For many readers, their enjoyment of The Heart Goes Last will hinge upon how much they relate to the main characters and how far they can suspend their disbelief. I sympathised with the characters so much that when things did veer off on some weird tangents in the final act I was still sold and remained along for the ride. In all, Margaret Atwood’s novel is a sharp, fresh and witty look at a very human and insatiable desire for utopia and how this can lead to dystopia, dissatisfaction and an acute sense of modern life being rubbish. This is an utterly original and clever look at all of these things and so much more. Excellent.
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LibraryThing member jmchshannon
Charmaine and Stan are equal parts comical and pathetic in their desires for something better. The story itself delves into a weird world of self-sustaining communities, extreme poverty, corruption, and desperation. Throw in a few sexbots, and add to that a cluelessness on the part of both
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Charmaine and Stan, and the result is a bitingly humorous story meant to inspire discussion as well as entertain. In true black comedy fashion, the story ends on a particularly bitter note that is ominous but yet perfectly sums up the entire novel. The Heart Goes Last is not as serious as some of her other novels, which may turn off some of Ms. Atwood’s fans, but it is an interesting addition to her body of work. In a weird sort of way, I really loved this quirky but dark novel.
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LibraryThing member Mercef
Pleasantville meets The Stepford Wives and Orwell's 1984. Whilst not a fan of the speculative fiction genre, this novel kept me interested. I wanted to learn the fate of Stan and Charmaine and was intrigued to find out what the Positron project was and what it would entail.
LibraryThing member Vinbert
I like Atwood, I really do. Whilst I'm not a rabid, die hard fan, I've enjoyed her previous works and like the socially conscious voices her stories always have. I am not, however, a large fan of this book. It could be the bad men portrayals through out the story, (must every man be an abuser?) It
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could be the absolute mess of a mind that is Charmaine, it could be any number of things. Yes, the end was telegraphed for quite some time, but even at the big reveal, there is no ironclad YES moment.. which is disappointing considering how many fake Elvises (is that even the plural of Elvis? Elvii? I'm thinking if it's pelvises, it must be Elvises. Spellcheck be damned!) that we had to slog through. All in all, I give it two stars for originality, but the story kind of bumped along, and I'm still not sure of Jocelyn's reasons, and Aurora got her face scraped off? And that's the best they could do to fix it? Honestly, I'm still shaking my head..
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LibraryThing member bibleblaster
Atwood does her usual excellent job of extrapolating from current realities to create a troubling future. This is no Maddadam trilogy, though. The characters are rather shallow in the manner of too many black comedies. I generally love Atwood, but this wouldn't be my top recommendation.
LibraryThing member davidel
This is my first Atwood book, though I saw the movie of "Handmaid's Tale" so I know this novel covers some of the same themes.

Blackest of black humor that had me laughing out loud at points. Atwood pillories men’s objectification of women, commercialization, corporate malfeasance – and average
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people’s surrender to, and complicity in, all these things. Hysterical and horrifying at the same time. People sign lifetime contracts to spend half their lives in prison, in order to escape poverty. The prison kills people for body parts. They’ve developed “prostibots” – life-sized sex robots, which can be customized for desirable phrases and behaviors. And then there’s a brain operation that causes the subject to fall passionately in love with whoever he/she sees first upon awakening; men are kidnapping women in order to obtain lifelong willing sex slaves. Since the women are ultimately content in their new lives, what’s so bad? In one case the procedure malfunctions when the man is out of the room when the women awakens, and she falls in love with a teddy bear (!). At the end, one of the characters is given an explicit choice – do you want to be more free, or more secure?
...
Hard to give more than three stars to a farce with literally no likable characters...but worth reading.
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LibraryThing member Carolinejyoung
Such a disappointing ending!
LibraryThing member mojomomma
IN the not too distant future, society copes with economic decline by setting up towns in which half the population is imprisioned one month, and then swaps places with their "alternates" on the "outside" the next month. To escape the rampant crime and unemployment, our couple opts for this life
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style. They quickly discover that all is not as idyllic as it seems. Once all the hardened criminals are ground up for chicken feed, who is left?
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LibraryThing member albertgoldfain
Atwood very efficiently sets up a psychological experiment, planned society, and moral dilemma in just the first hundred pages, and then spends the rest of the novel upping the ante and painstakingly taking things to their natural conclusions. Years ago I had set up a thought experiment in which a
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society was forced to swap houses/cities every few years on the strength of Twain's "travel is fatal to prejudice" and the economic boon of perpetual travelers...so I found the Positron/Consilience prisoner oscillation to be a step up from a conventional dystopia.
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LibraryThing member writestuff
Anyone who reads my blog must know how much I love Atwood’s work. I had so much hope for this novel…but I walked away from it feeling disappointed. Set in the future, The Heart Goes Last examines a married couple trying to stay afloat in an economic and social collapse. I believe that Atwood
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wanted to write a satire – and she does…but the plot is weak and the characters silly and unbelievable. Instead of being horrified by a future controlled by psychopaths, I found myself merely grimacing. Don’t bother with this one.
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LibraryThing member SamSattler
That The Heart Goes Last is the first title I have read by Margaret Atwood places me, I suspect, at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to discussing the novel’s merits and faults. I cannot compare it to the fourteen Margaret Atwood novels that preceded it so I do not know with any certainty
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just how different it may be from her usual fare. I do know that Atwood is no stranger to dystopian related plotlines, so The Heart Goes Last probably comes as no big shock to her more experienced readers. What makes this one a bit different from the usual novel is that it began life as a serialization project of Atwood’s that only later came together as the novel it is. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it may explain the somewhat tenuous connection between the tone of the book’s early chapters and the tone of its later ones.

The Heart Goes Last opens in a strange new United States, a country whose economic system has so completely collapsed that people consider themselves lucky to have even an old car to find shelter within. Stan and Charmaine, a married couple, are doing exactly that while Stan desperately searches for work and Charmaine brings home a few dollars every day from her dead end job. They are fast running out of money, though, and it is becoming more and more difficult to find a place safe enough to park their car for even a few hours rest because, as little as they have, others want to take it from them.

So when Stan and Charmaine hear that a neighboring town called Consilience is running something called The Positron Project, they eagerly apply for acceptance into the program. And why wouldn’t they? There is a comfortable, clean house for everyone in Consilience and, more importantly, the unemployment rate is zero. Everyone has a job, a warm place to sleep, and plenty of nourishing food. What could be the catch? Well hang on a second.

But even when told that the home and jobs will be theirs only on alternating months of the year, and that when not living in the home they will be prisoners inside Positron Prison, Stan and Charmaine jump at the deal. After all, one month a prisoner, one month a prison administrator, really doesn’t sound that bad to two people in constant danger of being killed in their sleep.

This is the premise of The Heart Goes Last and, as the novel begins, Atwood presents it all in a very serious manner. But about midway through, her story is consumed by infidelity, rather kinky sex that includes lifelike robots to fulfill every sexual fantasy imaginable (think Elvis and Marilyn), and near farcical escapes from the prison. While it is all very amusing and entertaining (as I will be the first to admit), I find myself wishing that Atwood had maintained throughout the novel the more serious tone with which she began it. The result would, I think, have been a much more satisfying novel than the comic satire this one morphed into.
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LibraryThing member Dreesie
Margaret Atwood does it again.

This post-apocalyptic novel is a bit different than the MaddAdam series. This time, the apocalypse is economic. The great recession has turned into full-scale depression, with much of the northeast seeming more like Detroit at its worst. There are few jobs, and a lot
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of people live in their cars. There are also roving gangs who will steal anything in your car if you leave it--or leave yourself unprotected.

Given this environment, their stinky car (gas provided by Charmaine's part-time bar job), stress, and fear--she and tan pot top move to Positron, a planned walled community. They are given jobs, a house, and take their every-other-month turn as prison inmates. But what is really going on?

Great premise, but gets a little loopy in the end. Buy Atwood even makes loopy seem plausible.
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LibraryThing member St.CroixSue
This is one of Atwood’s books about a dystopian future and the inevitable clashes with evil greedy influences. She has a way of writing about very creepy concepts in amusing and at times downright humorous ways.

Pages

320

ISBN

0385540353 / 9780385540353
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