I just finished reading ‘The Heart Goes Last’, a novel by Margaret Atwood. Atwood is justly famous for her dystopian novels and that are rich in character but sometimes flow slowly. This one is different.
The Heart Goes Last can only be described as a rather kinky dystopian novel with some lead characters that have the internal monologue of a tape on an endless loop. It’s quite funny in parts and well-written and it’s clear she had some fun with this one.
Stan and Charmaine are victims of a vast economic collapse, living in their car and scrambling for gas and food money. When a prosperous planned community offers an escape from post-apocalyptic misery, they don’t question the details. That’s just as well, since the details of Consilience don’t follow any rational logic. The thriving city is built around Positron Prison, and residents like Stan and Charmaine are expected to alternate months as support staff and prisoners, with each group providing work and a rationale for the other. Consilience promises a meaningful life of luxury, in complete isolation from the outside world. The catch, of course, is that once you enter, you can’t leave; it’s the roach hotel of the postmodern world.
Charmaine and Stan love it at first. The months in the slammer aren’t too bad – Stan tends chickens and Charmaine has a job administering medicine. Things get complicated when Charmaine becomes obsessed with the guy part of the couple who inhabits their house when Stan and Charmaine are in prison. Also, she discovers that her ‘medicine administration’ is simply a death cocktail for the unlucky recipients.
Like all dystopias, there are big brothers spying on everyone and so forth but that’s not important. Things get a bit crazier when they get involved with an underground movement to bring down the rulers of the place and the ‘possibilibots’ which are basically very advanced sex robots. Stan escapes disguised as an Elvis sex robot and, if possible, things get a little crazier.
Atwood is a highly talented and gifted writer and she has fun with this. I imagine you will too even though it has its flaws. Give it a try! https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/books/review-margaret-atwoods-the-heart-goes-last-conjures-a-kinky-dystopia.html
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