The Heart Goes Last, by Margaret Atwood

Today I'm looking at another book by the author of The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood. Today though I'm reviewing The Heart Goes Last, a book written a couple of years ago and definitely takes a lot of inspiration from the financial crisis which began in 2007. Overall this book is interesting and it has some tantalizing plot threads, but I feel like Atwood ends up trying to do too much and cover too many topics so the result feels far more scattered. In many ways I'm almost reminded of a Phillip K. Dick novel like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Dick had this habit of coming up with a ton of ideas for his books, any one of which could have been the basis of an entire novel. The problem was Dick was so hopped up on methamphetamines the entire time that he wandered off to a thousand different interesting ideas. Atwood's book definitely doesn't have the same frantic pace that Dick's work does, but it feels like a similar effect in regards to the lack of focus.

The book follows a married couple, Stan and Charmaine, two young professionals who were hit by a cataclysmic financial crash sometime in the near future. Most of New England and the Rust Belt are gutted wastelands, any companies that remained have packed up and headed west. The super rich live tax-free on floating communities offshore, while 40% of the U.S. population is unemployed and law enforcement is something that happens only in the richest enclaves.

Stan and Charmaine have been living in their car for months now, desperately short on cash and wondering if they'll survive to tomorrow. Then they hear about the opportunity provided by Consilience, a social experiment town that provides full housing, full employment, and a safe community. The catch is that every other month half the population spends their time locked up in the prison, the central ''industry'' of Consilience while the other half act as the civilians. Most people, Stan and Charmaine included, are too desperate too be overly worried by Consilience's weird rules and are just happy to have food in their bellies and a safe place to sleep. Unsurprisingly, of course, things are not as they appear and Stan and Charmaine find themselves embroiled in a much more sinister conspiracy.

As I said, the biggest problem I have is this book has a lot of things going on, but there are so many threads that I don't think Atwood really gets a chance to develop any of them particularly well. I'm also left scratching my head at some of the plotlines or decisions for how the stories get resolved, which makes this book less than perfect for me. Atwood is still an excellent writer and she does at least touch on a lot of themes in this book, but it feels very lacking in focus and I think that's to the book's detriment.

The foremost example, without getting into spoilers, is the whole prison setup to Consilience. The residents of Consilience are working whether they're inside prison or outside prison, and either way their jobs and houses are assigned to them. It's basically a giant, centrally-planned economy with most of the profits (allegedly) getting scooped off to the investors in the project. Like, for example, they say part of the full employment plan is to have people be guards for the prison, providing jobs, while also exploiting cheap prison labor. But if everyone's working for the same company, having some of them be guards is really just make-work that serves no real purpose. You'd think it'd be more profitable to have everyone working all the time.

The only reason I could think of having the prison population is what Ed, the guy in charge of the whole Consilience project, says at the beginning. He veers into mustache-twirling villain territory by saying that the American economy is failing because we simply aren't willing to make use of slave labor, starving people to death while wringing every possible bit of work from them. So in theory the reason to have a prison population is to make use of slave labor. But the entire population of Consilience are basically prisoners anyway because they're not allowed outside the walled enclave of the town, whether they're in a prison month or no. Everything is either imported or made by the company, everyone works for the company, and is paid by the company. They're literally stuck in a company town, it just raises more questions than answers.

And this isn't the only plot thread that doesn't really get explored to its fullest potential. Charmaine has a tragic childhood fraught with physical and emotional abuse, but that's seen in glimpses and used an explanation for why she has such a Pollyanna exterior. Not to mention the double life Charmaine is living when she starts having an affair with Max, one of the residents of the house when Stan and Charmaine are spending their months in prison. Or a couple other plotlines I won't go into detail about because that goes into spoiler territory. But I think if Atwood had chosen to focus on just one or maybe two things this could have been a really good book, but because she doesn't keep the book focused we end up with potentialities instead of actualities.

And then there is the ending which I find kind of objectionable for a number of reasons, but again that gets into spoiler territory. Suffice to say everything seems wrapped up a little too neatly for this book. Overall I think this book could have been really great, but because Atwood starts exploring these different avenues the result is sadly less than spectacular.

- Kalpar

The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

Today I'm looking at another book which was recommended to me by a friend, The Handmaid's Tale  by Margaret Atwood. This is mostly a feminist social commentary with only very, very light sci-fi elements so it's just the slightest bit outside my usual bailiwick. However I think this is a very important book because the issues it addresses have not gone away. In some cases you might be able to say they've even become more important with the emergence of various Men's Rights Activists and Red-pillers. It is hardly a subtle book, but that makes it no less valid.

The plot of The Handmaid's Tale takes place in New England at some undetermined future point. Christian extremists assassinated most of the American government and suspended the Constitution, establishing a strict, orthodox, militant, religious, and patriarchal society called the Republic of Gilead. The Republic's forces are involved in wars with dissident groups such as Baptists and Methodists across the country and it's implied a majority of the male population are involved in fighting these wars. Women, however, have been relegated to only a handful of roles.

Wives occupy the highest ranks of the hierarchy, dress entirely in blue, and enjoy relative luxury. Next are the Aunts, older unmarried women who are the only women allowed to read and write and serve as disciplinarians for the female population. Then there are the Marthas who dress entirely in green and do all the cooking, cleaning, and other ''traditional'' domestic tasks. There are also Econowives who dress in a mixture of green, blue, and red because their husbands are not high enough status to be granted a Wife and a Martha so all of the work falls upon them. At the bottom of this hierarchy are the Handmaids, who are dressed entirely in red and exist only as breeding stock.

It's implied that the results of chemical and atomic war have greatly reduced the population capable of producing viable offspring and Gilead faces a shortage of births. Part of their solution is the system of Handmaids, who are moved from house to house so they can produce as many babies as possible. The Handmaids are given almost no important tasks and their entire value is wrapped up in their ability to bear children. They are not even given proper names but merely referred to by the name of their owner. The main character, whose real name we never learn, serves a man named Fred so she is called Offred, while other Handmaids are called Ofglen, Ofcharles, and so on. If a Handmaid proves unable to bear children they're sent to the Colonies with other societal rejects.

The book does a very good job of showing the tedium, desperation, and deeply dehumanizing experience of women under this system. All women are required to wear clothing which conceals everything but their heads and sometimes their hands. And in the case of the Handmaids, they are required to wear headgear outside the house which covers their head and makes their face difficult to see, to remove all temptation the sight of women provides men. This is described by the Republic of Gilead as a good thing for women because it makes them free from the problems women experienced prior to the Republic, such as unwanted sexual advances, cat-calling, and even rape, but we see very much how the misbehavior of men is used as a mean to punish and control women in the name of ''protecting'' them.

One of the biggest themes is the enforced tedium of the lives of the women because they are relegated to the domestic sphere The Handmaids are severely restricted in what they're allowed to do because their ability to bear children is seen as a vital and necessary resource. The Marthas, of course, have to perform all the necessary domestic labor and receive little to no thanks for it and certainly no break from the endless labor. Even the life of the Wives is shown as little better than a gilded cage. They may enjoy endless creature comforts and lives of relative ease, but there is the frustration of not being able to do anything. The women are just passing time until they die, imprisoned in their own houses.

This book is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but I think sometimes that lack of subtlety is needed in a book. Although The Handmaid's Tale was published in 1986, it unfortunately remains very relevant today. The support of various people for ''traditional gender roles'' (which incidentally weren't a thing until the nineteenth century for most people) and assertions that women need to be protected and cherished in the home, remaining unsullied by the dangerous world dominated by men. Not to mention the constant criticism of what women are wearing, whether it's too conservative or too licentious, and the inevitable rounds of victim-blaming that happen after a high-profile rape case. On some level, I wish American society had gotten to a point where we could look at The Handmaid's Tale and see it as a quaint criticism of social issues as they existed in a previous era. Unfortunately, much like criticism of racism, it remains very valid today and shows America has a long way to go.

- Kalpar