The Heart Goes Last: A Novel

by Margaret Atwood

Test, 2015

Status

Available

Call number

PR9199.A8

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)

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Collection

Your library

Rating

(712 ratings; 3.4)

Publication

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

Genres

Physical description

6.56 inches

Awards

Media reviews

New York Times
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.
— 5 more
The New York Times
“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.
The Globe and Mail
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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Quill and Quire
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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Vancouver Sun Newspaper
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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The Guardian
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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LCC

PR9199.A8

Language

English

ISBN

0385540353 / 9780385540353

More

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