Margaret Atwood is
one of my all-time favorite authors. I
once drove from Philadelphia to Boston for an opportunity to meet her, hear her
speak, and gather some treasured inscriptions.
The line for signings was long, but I waited until the end to get as
many of her books signed as I could. At
last, I made it to her desk, and she signed every one of my copies. She was kind, gracious, and quite funny. It was a day I will not soon forget. The Heart Goes Last is another of her dystopian novels.
The first novel of
hers I read was The Handmaid’s Tale. It blew me away, and it was an early
example of a novel I read and immediately started over from page 1. When the newest film of the movie came out, I
quickly forgot about an older version with Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway. I recently watched the new first and second
seasons, and I hope the promised third will be out soon. If you have not read the Handmaid’s Tale, do so as soon as possible. This is a story that could easily be
transformed into fact.
Stan and Charmaine
have both lost their jobs. The city is
ravaged with chaos. They are now living
in their car. The tension between the couple
is intense. They are also not getting
along. To make matters worse, they must
constantly be on the alert for roving bands of criminals. Atwood writes, “Sleeping in the car is
cramped. Being a third-hand Honda, it’s
no palace to begin with. If it was a van
they’d have more room, but fat chance of affording one of those, even back when
they thought they had money. Stan says
they’re lucky to have any car at all, which is true, but that luckiness doesn’t
make the car any bigger. // Charmaine thinks Stan ought to sleep in the back
because he needs more space—it would only be fair, he’s larger—but he has to be
in the front in order to drive them away fast in an emergency. He doesn’t trust Charmaine’s ability to
function under those circumstances: he says she’d be too busy screaming to
drive. So Charmaine can have the more
spacious back, though even so she has to curl up like a snail because she can’t
exactly stretch out” (3).
Stan has a brother,
Conor, who is something of a misfit. He
has been known to use drugs, and he was constantly getting into scrapes, for
which he must turn to Stan to bail him out.
As they near “The Positron Project,” they are recruited for a walled
community where they will be safe, given housing, clothing, food, in short,
everything they could want. Conor tells
his brother about this scheme, and he desperately tries to convince Stan
Positron is a dangerous cult. They do
not take Conor’s advice. Stan does not
trust his brother, and he and Charmaine sign up for housing.
At first, everything
seems as advertised, but there are some sinister and evil doings in
Consilience, the town in which Stan and Charmaine now live. As the couple immerse themselves into the
cult, things become darker and darker.
But they soon discover there is no way out. Then, Stan finds out there is an exit, but
Stan trusts no one. He believes it is a
test, and becoming part of the plot could end in their deaths. Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last is another addition to the swarm of dystopian
novels worthy of this Booker Prize winning novelist. This suspenseful story is another feather in
Atwood’s impressive oeuvre. 5 Stars
--Chiron, 7/17/18
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