460 pages
English language
Published Feb. 27, 2015
4 stars
(35 reviews)
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 …
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.
kim karma reviewed The heart goes last by Margaret Atwood
Review of 'The heart goes last' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I read a lot of bad reviews of this but I quite liked it and found it funny.
kim karma reviewed The heart goes last by Margaret Atwood
Review of 'The Heart Goes Last' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I read a lot of bad reviews of this but I quite liked it and found it funny.
Enno reviewed The heart goes last by Margaret Atwood
Review of 'The Heart Goes Last' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I didn't love this book the way I loved some of Atwood's other works. There are some interesting ideas here, but the characters aren't sympathetic.
outofrange reviewed The heart goes last by Margaret Atwood
Review of 'The heart goes last' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This read like a puppet show for me. A good, relevant, funny puppet show that balances some disdain for the puppets with incisive social commentary.
Oreo Teeth reviewed The heart goes last by Margaret Atwood
Review of 'The heart goes last' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A delightfully twisted dystopian tale, a little bit Stepford and a little bit Soylent.
jellybeyreads reviewed The heart goes last by Margaret Atwood
Review of 'The Heart Goes Last' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I love Margaret Atwood; this is not my favorite Margaret Atwood novel. Still compelling and finished in 24 hours. Rather jarring ending. Weak transitions between what were, I have since learned, were the serialized portions of this novel. Central characters not particularly likable--Stan is an Angry Man and rather misogynistic, and Charmaine is absurdly childlike as a weird consequence of ptsd. I was never really convinced by the Positron Project itself--why is the prison component necessary for this planned society? There's no reason everyone couldn't live in their little non-prison houses all the time--other than the darker motives that come to light later in the book. But how would the salesmen ever be able to sell this to potential residents? Because, on the surface at least, the prison isn't necessary.
loppear reviewed The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
Review of 'The Heart Goes Last' on Goodreads
3 stars
Dark comedy (?) romp through a close-to-home capitalist consumer-prison world suffused with uncertainly fulfilled sexual fantasies.
Subjects
- Regression (Civilization)
- Homelessness
- Dystopias
- Prisons
- Married people
- Fiction