The Heart Goes Last
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By the author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments
Charmaine sees an advertisement for a project called Positron that promises you a job, a place to live, a bed to sleep in - imagine how appealing that would be if you were working in a dive bar and living in your car. She and her husband, Stan, apply at once.
The only catch is that once you're in there, you can't get out.
No one writes the lust and the loves, the wickedness and the weakness of the human heart like the splendid Margaret Atwood.
'Margaret Atwood [is] a living legend' New York Times Book Review
'Gloriously madcap . . . You only pause in your laughter when you realise that, in its constituent parts, the world she depicts here is all too horribly plausible' Stephanie Merritt, Observer
'Her eye for the most unpredictable caprices of the human heart and her narrative fearlessness have made her one of the world's most celebrated novelists' Naomi Alderman, Guardian
'The bestselling author who shot to fame thirty years ago with The Handmaid's Tale is still at her darkly comic best' Sunday Times
Charmaine sees an advertisement for a project called Positron that promises you a job, a place to live, a bed to sleep in - imagine how appealing that would be if you were working in a dive bar and living in your car. She and her husband, Stan, apply at once.
The only catch is that once you're in there, you can't get out.
No one writes the lust and the loves, the wickedness and the weakness of the human heart like the splendid Margaret Atwood.
'Margaret Atwood [is] a living legend' New York Times Book Review
'Gloriously madcap . . . You only pause in your laughter when you realise that, in its constituent parts, the world she depicts here is all too horribly plausible' Stephanie Merritt, Observer
'Her eye for the most unpredictable caprices of the human heart and her narrative fearlessness have made her one of the world's most celebrated novelists' Naomi Alderman, Guardian
'The bestselling author who shot to fame thirty years ago with The Handmaid's Tale is still at her darkly comic best' Sunday Times
- Published: Dec 30 2021
- Pages: 432
- 196 x 126mm
- ISBN: 9780349007298
Press Reviews
Stephanie Merritt
ObserverGloriously madcap . . . You only pause in your laughter when you realise that, in its constituent parts, the world she depicts here is all too horribly plausible
Naomi Alderman
GuardianHer eye for the most unpredictable caprices of the human heart and her narrative fearlessness have made her one of the world's most celebrated novelists
- Sunday Times
The bestselling author who shot to fame 30 years ago with The Handmaid's Tale is still at her darkly comic best
Erica Wagner
Harper's BazaarAtwood's gift is to take what's already out there and nudge it to the next level . . . The Heart Goes Last is all at once thrilling, funny, grim - and shockingly convincing
John Sutherland
The TimesWhat distinguishes Atwood's apocalypticism is her insistence that we have brought it on ourselves. It's not meteor strikes, or aliens that destroy our world. It's us . . . I loved it
- Guardian
Jubilant comedy of errors, bizarre bedroom farce, SF prison-break thriller, psychedelic sixties crime caper: The Heart Goes Last scampers in and out of all of these genres, pausing only to quote Milton on the loss of Eden or Shakespeare on weddings. Meanwhile, it performs a hard-eyed autopsy on themes of impersonation and self-impersonation, revealing so many layers of contemporary deception and self-deception that we don't know whether to laugh or cry
Anita Sethi
ObserverThis visceral study of desperation and desire journeys into the dark heart of greed, exploitation and brutality, as it portrays a project that is "an infringement of individual liberties, an attempt at total social control, an insult to the human spirit". It is filled with passages of great intellectual and emotional acuity, appealing both to the head and to the heart
Stephanie Merritt
ObserverGloriously madcap . . . You only pause in your laughter when you realise that, in its constituent parts, the world she depicts here is all too horribly plausible
Naomi Alderman
GuardianHer eye for the most unpredictable caprices of the human heart and her narrative fearlessness have made her one of the world's most celebrated novelists
- Sunday Times
The bestselling author who shot to fame 30 years ago with The Handmaid's Tale is still at her darkly comic best
Erica Wagner
Harper's BazaarAtwood's gift is to take what's already out there and nudge it to the next level . . . The Heart Goes Last is all at once thrilling, funny, grim - and shockingly convincing
John Sutherland
The TimesWhat distinguishes Atwood's apocalypticism is her insistence that we have brought it on ourselves. It's not meteor strikes, or aliens that destroy our world. It's us . . . I loved it
- Guardian
Jubilant comedy of errors, bizarre bedroom farce, SF prison-break thriller, psychedelic sixties crime caper: The Heart Goes Last scampers in and out of all of these genres, pausing only to quote Milton on the loss of Eden or Shakespeare on weddings. Meanwhile, it performs a hard-eyed autopsy on themes of impersonation and self-impersonation, revealing so many layers of contemporary deception and self-deception that we don't know whether to laugh or cry
Anita Sethi
ObserverThis visceral study of desperation and desire journeys into the dark heart of greed, exploitation and brutality, as it portrays a project that is "an infringement of individual liberties, an attempt at total social control, an insult to the human spirit". It is filled with passages of great intellectual and emotional acuity, appealing both to the head and to the heart
- New Yorker
An arresting perspective on the confluence of information, freedom, and security in the modern age
New York Times Book Review
Captivating. . . . Thrilling. . . . Margaret Atwood [is] a living legend