Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Most Anticipated Books of 2025!

Summary and Reviews of The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

The Heart Goes Last

A Novel

by Margaret Atwood
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • First Published:
  • Sep 29, 2015, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2016, 320 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book 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 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.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Although the plot elements in The Heart Goes Last sound mostly damning, Atwood adds no small amount of good things about the Consilience project: it subscribes to a green living model with self-sustaining industries and economic stability. And while most dystopian novels are as dark as the communities they describe, thankfully, Atwood avoids this trap by using humor. The technique allows her to be even more biting in her attitudes regarding greed, while simultaneously keeping her protagonists from being dull. This also emphasizes their humanity, which is vitally essential to the overall plot. The Heart Goes Last is a masterful piece of prose that's a page-turner to the very end, and a novel that I highly recommend...continued

Full Review (641 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Davida Chazan).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



The Kibbutz

Atwood's experimental Positron/Consilience project in The Heart Goes Last shares many similarities with the kibbutz movement in Israel, which began in the early 20th century as a way for Jews to develop and settle the land.

The basic philosophy behind the kibbutz embodied Karl Marx's maxim: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." The early kibbutzim (plural for kibbutz) were mostly agricultural settlements with a communal lifestyle (I lived on one for a while too). Everyone had a job with members performing the less desirable ones on a rotating basis. People ate all their meals together and everyone got a very simple furnished place to live in, and clothes to wear. Children lived in communal homes and were ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Heart Goes Last, try these:

  • Frankissstein jacket

    Frankissstein

    by Jeanette Winterson

    Published 2020

    About this book

    More by this author

    What will happen when homo sapiens is no longer the smartest being on the planet? In fiercely intelligent prose, Jeanette Winterson shows us how much closer we are to that future than we realize. Funny and furious, bold and clear-sighted, Frankissstein is a love story about life itself.

  • Exhalation jacket

    Exhalation

    by Ted Chiang

    Published 2020

    About this book

    More by this author

    From an award-winning science fiction writer, the long-awaited new collection of stunningly original, humane, and already celebrated short stories.

We have 10 read-alikes for The Heart Goes Last, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Margaret Atwood
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Bluest Eye
    by Toni Morrison
    The story of a black girl in America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others. First published 1970; won the 1993 Nobel Prize.
Who Said...

Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Beast of the North Woods
    by Annelise Ryan

    When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature.

  • Book Jacket

    Three Days in June
    by Anne Tyler

    A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

  • Book Jacket

    Harlem Rhapsody
    by Victoria Christopher Murray

    The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

T the L

and be entered to win..