Available:*
Material Type | Library | Call Number | Suggested Age | Status |
---|---|---|---|---|
Single Media Player | Searching... Cabell County Public Library | ATW | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
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 aroundand 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.From the Hardcover edition.
Author Notes
Margaret Atwood was born on November 18, 1939 in Ottawa, Canada. She received a B.A. from Victoria College, University of Toronto in 1961 and an M.A. from Radcliff College in 1962.
Her first book of verse, Double Persephone, was published in 1961 and was awarded the E. J. Pratt Medal. She has published numerous books of poetry, novels, story collections, critical work, juvenile work, and radio and teleplays. Her works include The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Power Politics, Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride, Morning in the Buried House, the MaddAdam trilogy, and The Heart Goes Last. She has won numerous awards including the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, the Booker Prize in 2000 for The Blind Assassin, the Giller Prize and the Premio Mondello for Alias Grace, and the Governor General's Award in 1966 for The Circle Game and in 1986 for The Handmaid's Tale, which also won the very first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. She won the PEN Pinter prize in 2016 for her political activism. She was awarded the 2016 PEN Pinter Prize for the outstanding literary merit of her body of work.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Guardian Review
What the critics thought of: Morrissey's List of the Lost, James Shapiro's 1606 and Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last Now and again there is a critical drubbing so comprehensive that it almost literally makes your eyes water. Such was the fate of List of the Lost, the debut novel by Morrissey. "Could this be the most toe-curlingly terrible book ever?" ran the headline of a piece by Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail, who didn't hold back on his own colourful prose: "Morrissey's writing is Adrian Mole on magic mushrooms, verbal diarrhoea being squirted at you through an industrial hose." The paper then gleefully reproduced a selection of the book's sex scenes, which have been widely tipped for the Literary Review's bad sex award ("Eliza's breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra's howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation"). "Terrible ... monstrously overwritten," wrote Charlotte Runcie in the Daily Telegraph, and for the NME's Jordan Bassett, "it feels like you're swallowing concrete as you slog through the book's huge paragraphs." Only Melissa Katsoulis in the Times sounded a more forgiving note. "What did the reviewers expect? An elegant disquisition on the pitfalls of modern marriage? A tragicomic look at what can go wrong when you move to the country? ... unreadable at times, but inimitable and irreplaceable. Long may he joyously jiggle his art in our faces, whether we like it or not." At the other end of the spectrum 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear by James Shapiro proved to be critical catnip, with its themes of the playwright, the plague and the Gunpowder Plot. A "dark, enthralling, and brilliant narrative", wrote Robert McCrum in the Observer, and the Spectator's Sam Leith found it a "terrifically interesting book". In the Independent, Lucasta Miller praised the "exhaustive yet exhilarating depth" of the narrative. "Shapiro does not have quite the cool intellectual elegance found in fellow New Historicist Stephen Greenblatt 's Hamlet in Purgatory. What he has instead is a vigorous, burning appetite for historical information and an equally burning desire to impart it." But Kate Maltby of the Times pointed out one rather inconvenient fact: King Lear wasn't, in fact, written in 1606 at all. "As Shapiro acknowledges ... Shakespeare had completed Lear before the Gunpowder Plot of November 1605, and 1606 was instead dominated by Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. Perish the thought, that 'Year of Lear' simply rhymes better than 'Year of Macbeth'." Fortunately, this did little to diminish her enjoyment of the book: " 1606 remains a work of rich detail." It was a mixed bag for Margaret Atwood's latest novel, The Heart Goes Last, an adventure/love story set in the author's customary dystopian future. Doug Johnstone of the Independent on Sunday found that "as the plot progresses it becomes increasingly more slapstick, and Atwood herself seems to stop taking things seriously". For the Daily Telegraph's Anthony Cummins, the book "sometimes feels spun out... Overall it's a strange fish: a sex comedy crossed with a stern satire on predatory big business in the shape of a knockabout action romp." Only Christina Patterson of the Sunday Times was unequivocal. "It is, as always, brilliantly done," she wrote, "as gripping as it is chilling. It is also extremely funny ... Margaret Atwood has a brain the size of a (dystopian) planet. And her prose sings."
New York Review of Books Review
THE HEART GOES LAST, by Margaret Atwood. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $26.95.) Captivating "speculative fiction" about a town whose residents serve as prisoners explores both economic oppression and the conflict between love and independence. NEVER ENOUGH: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, by Michael D'Antonio. (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, $26.99.) Psychological, technological and social trends lend a thoughtful context for Trump. THIS IS YOUR LIFE, HARRIET CHANCE!, by Jonathan Evison. (Algonquin, $25.95.) This intricately structured novel reveals dark secrets behind an apparently sedate existence. BLACK SILENT MAJORITY: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment, by Michael Javen Fortner. (Harvard University, $29.95.) A professor offers a fascinating argument about the African-American roots of the war on drugs. UNFINISHED BUSINESS: Women Men Work Family, by Anne-Marie Slaughter. (Random House, $28.) Public policy changes to enable working parents to meet responsibilities are usefully examined. THE VISITING PRIVILEGE: New and Collected Stories, by Joy Williams. (Knopf, $30.) These tales, spanning nearly 50 years, are marked by queasy humor and a wry nihilism. THE INVENTION OF NATURE: Alexander von Humboldt's New World, by Andrea Wulf. (Knopf, $30.) The German scientist's monumental journey in the Americas; a readable account. ONCE IN A GREAT CITY: A Detroit Story, by David Maraniss. (Simon & Schuster, $32.50.) A bighearted study of 1963, the turning point in the city's decline. THE PRIZE, by Jill Bialosky. (Counterpoint, $25.) This graceful novel balances the transcendence of art against the slog of everyday life. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books.
Library Journal Review
Newlyweds Stan and Charmaine were passed over by the American dream. An economic collapse (an extreme fictionalization of the 2008 financial crisis) made jobs scarce and plunged once pleasant suburban communities into squalor. After losing their home, Stan and Charmaine are living in their car and fighting off looters. The couple are so desperate for a better life that they join the experimental community of Consilience, despite it being painfully obvious that Consilience is too good to be true. After a promising beginning, Atwood's narrative soon shows the strain of being an expanded compilation of five previously published serial novellas. Listeners will be surprised to find that what first appears to be speculative fiction in the vein of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale devolves into a campy sexual farce complete with sadomasochism and men lusting after chickens. Unfortunately, the characters aren't fascinating enough to sustain the sharp left turn, especially for the 12 hours of this audiobook's run time. Mark Deakins and Cassandra Campbell narrate Stan's and Charmaine's alternating chapters effectively. -VERDICT -Atwood's popularity is likely to lead to high demand in public libraries. Fans of the author's "MaddAddam" trilogy may enjoy.-Julie Judkins, Univ. of North Texas, Denton © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.