The heart goes last

By the author of The Handmaid's Tale and The TestamentsCharmaine sees an advertisement for a project called Positron that promises you a job, a place to live, a bed to sleep in - imagine how appealing that would be if you were working in a dive bar and living in your car.

She and her husband, Stan, apply at once. The only catch is that once you're in there, you can't get out. No one writes the lust and the loves, the wickedness and the weakness of the human heart like the splendid Margaret Atwood. 'Margaret Atwood [is] a living legend' New York Times Book Review'Gloriously madcap . . . You only pause in your laughter when you realise that, in its constituent parts, the world she depicts here is all too horribly plausible' Stephanie Merritt, Observer'Her eye for the most unpredictable caprices of the human heart and her narrative fearlessness have made her one of the world's most celebrated novelists' Naomi Alderman, Guardian'The bestselling author who shot to fame thirty years ago with The Handmaid's Tale is still at her darkly comic best' Sunday Times