Meet the remarkable MARGARET ATWOOD and chat about her award-winning novels, including THE HEART GOES LAST, in November's Bookclub, Wednesday 4 November, 9-10pm

[TillyMumsnetBookClub]

Over her exceptional career, spanning forty books and almost fifty years, Margaret Atwood has returned to themes of totalitarianism, environmental destruction, sexual politics and economic failure. She always takes on these monsters with a piercing intelligence, and a wit that makes the pages sing. Her latest novel, The Heart Goes Last, is set in a future world that is ruined, lawless and based on greed. Stan and Charmaine used to have a fairly regular life, but now they are forced to live in their car, existing on scraps and cheap doughnuts. When they see an advert for the Positron Project, offering a job and a home, they desperately sign up, despite a gut feeling that this might not be the paradise that is promised. Still, all they have to do is give up their freedom once a month and spend a bit of time in a prison cell. How bad can that be? The plot becomes increasingly circus-like, involving Elvis sex-bots, eugenics, mind-control and some strange knitted teddies, but the remarkable truth is that it all seems entirely possible.

Margaret Atwood has written volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is known across the globe for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin (2000) and the MaddAddam trilogy. Find out more at our book of the month page.

You'll also find a huge range of reviews, videos and information on Atwood's excellent website or follow her very active Twitter feed.

Bloomsbury have 50 hardbacks of The Heart Goes Last to give to Mumsnetters: to claim your copy please fill in your details on the book of the month page. We’ll post on the thread when all the copies have gone. If you’re not lucky enough to bag one of those, you can always get a Kindle version here or hardback here.

We are honoured and delighted that Margaret Atwood will be joining us on 4th November 9-10pm to discuss The Heart Goes Last, her many award-winning works and her writing life. Please feel free to discuss the book here throughout the month and then come and meet Margaret on the night, ask her a question or simply tell her what you think of her books. Look forward to seeing you there!

3) How about "By reading novels?" Just kidding. More or less. Sometimes.

Please, please, can I quote you on this to the kids I teach?

Hello Margaret,

I would like to ask you about your views on how women are subjected to endless pressure about their looks. I think that the obsession with appearance and the resulting lack of self-esteem women suffer because of their failure to match so-called ideals of beauty is of epidemic proportions especially amongst younger women. I despair at the time wasted because of this. I was recently in Africa and a few days into my time there I started to feel that something was felt different to home. Then I realised it was the absence of images of 'beauty' and how freeing that felt.

I'd be very interested in your thoughts on this.

The very best of luck with the new book. I have really enjoyed reading your books in the past and I'm sure that I'll love this one too.

Good questions ItchyArmpits. So Margaret, do you believe in true love? Or everlasting love?

I'm late! Getting caught up, so excited about this!

@pieceofpurplesky

I am getting confused with this and "I am starved for you" which I got as a free short story ... Is it the same? It's the same characters?

Hello: I started The Heart Goes Last online as a single piece of long-short fiction; then built it into three more episodes, each ending (in true Charles Dickens fashion) with a cliffhanger. Then - after some panic on the part of my covers-and=pages publisher, who worried that I was going over to the Dark Side, I picked it all apart think of knitting and restructured, cut, pasted, added, built out a beginning, made my way through to the ending. So although the "seeds" of it are in the online episodes, the finished thing is a full novel, and quite different, as it turned out.

Gaze deeply into my eyes. Forget What You Though You Knew. Then begin at the beginning. >:>}

Hi Margaret, I've been absolutely gripped by The Heart Goes Last, somewhat to my surprise as I usually think of dystopian fiction as not being my thing. I really love the humour and absurdity in the situations you create, and I wanted to ask if you feel that writing about very serious themes with humour helps to bring your work to a wider audience; and also if the humour helps you as a writer to deal with these dark topics?

This is only the second of your books that I've read but I shall definitely be putting some more on my Christmas list!

@Duckdeamon

MNHQ, Amazing to have a webchat with Margaret Atwood! Excited.

My school friends and I read Handmaid's Tale and Cat's Eye in my late teens, they were passed around within the group, and they made a huge impression. really opened my eyes to feminism. Thank you!

Can't wait to read this one and discuss it with my mother!

My question is do you have plans to re-work more myths or old works, as you did with the Penelopiad?

Hello: Not old myths as such, not right now, but I'm hard at work on the Hogarth Shakespeare project -- choose a play and revisit it as a prose novel. The play I chose is The Tempest. Lots of unanswered questions. Lots of challenges.

Hi Margaret

Brilliant username

If you could have a webchat - or a coffee - with any writer living or dead, who would it be? Up to five people is fine! (generous, me)

My answer is you and Dame Julian of Norwich. I bet she would have username trouble as well.

Hi Margaret,

I'm so excited to speak to you and learn more about your writing through this thread. I hope you are well!

I was delighted to see that 'The Heart Goes Last' is dedicated to Angela Carter, along with others. As you and Angela Carter are two of my most favourite authors, I just wanted to ask why you decided to dedicate it to her and about the reasoning behind it.

Thank you,

Roxie

@SkaterGrrrrl

Very impressed, Mumsnet, MA is one of the greatest authors alive. . My favourites are Alias Grace, Moral Disorder and the Penelopiad. My question for MA is, was there a defining moment when you realised you were a feminist, or was it more of a slow burn thing?

Hello: I didn't hear that term much until the 1960s, when Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique (1964 or thereabouts) and that book did not describe my generation, but the one before mine. Being Canadian, having a tomboy mother who was an ace canoeist and a good shot with a bow, as well as a casual but effective fish-catcher, a speed skater, and later in her life an ice-dancer, and having grown up in the woods with a dad who encouraged small motor repair skills and the use of edged tools, etc., I did not feel very gender-oppressed, within the family, as a female person. I didn't really think about it much until the end of the sixties, when the women's movement broke out. I was too busy trying to be a writer in Canada, which at the time was more of a challenge.

But since that time I've thought quite a bit about what can happen to girls and women as a result of their gender. From silly to horrible.

As for "femimist," I always want people to define what they mean. Let's start with "women are human beings." I'll vote for that. It's a good beginning. From there we can delve into the details.

@Corygal

Hi Margaret

Brilliant username

If you could have a webchat - or a coffee - with any writer living or dead, who would it be? Up to five people is fine! (generous, me)

My answer is you and Dame Julian of Norwich. I bet she would have username trouble as well.

Hello: That's a very nice thought but we might have language problems. I think I'd call back the three friends I dedicated HEART to: Angela Carter, Marian Engel, and Judith Merril. We would have a fine old time. They didn't know one another (or rather Judy knew Marian but neither knew Angela), so that would be fun for them as well.

@frogletsmum

Hi Margaret, I've been absolutely gripped by The Heart Goes Last, somewhat to my surprise as I usually think of dystopian fiction as not being my thing. I really love the humour and absurdity in the situations you create, and I wanted to ask if you feel that writing about very serious themes with humour helps to bring your work to a wider audience; and also if the humour helps you as a writer to deal with these dark topics?

This is only the second of your books that I've read but I shall definitely be putting some more on my Christmas list!

Hello: Thanks very much!

@roxalox88

Hi Margaret,

I'm so excited to speak to you and learn more about your writing through this thread. I hope you are well!

I was delighted to see that 'The Heart Goes Last' is dedicated to Angela Carter, along with others. As you and Angela Carter are two of my most favourite authors, I just wanted to ask why you decided to dedicate it to her and about the reasoning behind it.

Thank you,

Roxie

Hello: She was a pal. Such a smart person with a wild sense of the bizarre. She would have got a big cackle out of this book... she was into a few kinky automata herself. Angela, this poster-post is for you....

Hi Margret,
Many years ago I wrote an essay about your use of frogs in Surfacing for my final English exam of high school. At the time (alongside good marks ) I received a comment from the teacher that in all their time teaching this book this topic had never been raised either in their mind or another student's essay.

My question (if I'm not too late) is did you actually spend a lot of time researching frogs for that novel?!

Alongside that I would also like to send you the most heartfelt thanks for how your books, recommended by a caring adult, essentially kept me wanting to stay in this world during a very dark time in my teenage years. The fact that darkness was/is an integral part of your books, of life, seeped into my psyche and helped see me through.

Hi Margaret , I enjoyed The Heart Goes Last. It made me reflect on how fast we fall - from love, from civilisation, from thinking of others as flesh and blood creatures to turning them into the 'other'. In Charmaine and Stand's world, there's hardly a principle in sight, just the necessity of expedience.

And it's not fantasy. From my own experiences through the credit crunch and beyond, I know just how fast one's principles can decay. I haven't actually had been tempted into intimacy with a chicken, but have been reduced on a couple of occasions to eating non free-range, something that I would never have believed a few years ago - all because of diminished financial resources and my lack of will power to just eat vegetables instead. Sounds a small thing, I know, but the first lost principle is the one agonised over the longest, the rest follow a lot more easily. And there have been more, one's that I'm not going to share here .

Loved the way the end exploded in colour, sound and farce - I can just see all those Elvises on the big screen. That last section was a welcome finale to the routine and order of the earlier, very disconcerting chapters detailing their time in the Positron Project.

I liked the layout of the book - thought it complemented the work well - how much input did you have in the layout, typefaces used, etc., and if 'not much', how much do you care about those sort of details in your own work?

When I read your work I feel enormous relief, more than anything - like a cool glass of water in the middle of the night. And excitement as well, afterwards.

But one thing I don't understand about The Heart - do you like Stan? I was ok about him until he went along with Charmaine's op. Little beast.

@ktlq

Good questions ItchyArmpits. So Margaret, do you believe in true love? Or everlasting love?

Hello: OF COURSE I do! But let's qualify that. There's more than one kind of love. I am still in love with my cat, Blackie, who's been dead for 20 years. I re-wrote Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur with a cast consisting entirely of cats, in his honour. (Boohoo. Snif. Sorry.)

Oh. You mean people. Right. I've been with Mr. Perfect now for 40 years.
Graeme Gibson. Romantic love morphs into a different kind, if you're lucky and put in the work. :)

And check the obvious flipping typo!! I'll put that down to technology..

@rozepanther

Hi Margret, Many years ago I wrote an essay about your use of frogs in Surfacing for my final English exam of high school. At the time (alongside good marks ) I received a comment from the teacher that in all their time teaching this book this topic had never been raised either in their mind or another student's essay.

My question (if I'm not too late) is did you actually spend a lot of time researching frogs for that novel?!

Alongside that I would also like to send you the most heartfelt thanks for how your books, recommended by a caring adult, essentially kept me wanting to stay in this world during a very dark time in my teenage years. The fact that darkness was/is an integral part of your books, of life, seeped into my psyche and helped see me through.

Hello: Thank you. Frogs? I grew up with a plentiful supply of frogs on hand, and have followed their plight (acid rain was bad for leopard frogs, but they seem to be recovering somewhat now). Congratulations on choosing an important essay question!

I am happy that my work was a reliable guide through the dark places. It's one of the things we can do. We take the reader into the dark, and, hopefully, out again. Risky business, sometimes.

Thanks for answering! I am still intrigued about your views of Marilyn. Did you love her too or did you find her to be a weak person? (I mean as an icon in popular culture). Or is that the point?

Thank you, Margaret! Knowing that you and Angela Carter were friends just makes me love you both more. Angela was definitely taken too soon! My two favourite books ever are 'A Hand Maid's Tale' and 'The Magic Toyshop'.

Do you think you'll write/release any more short story collections?

@chrystabelle

Hi Margaret , I enjoyed The Heart Goes Last. It made me reflect on how fast we fall - from love, from civilisation, from thinking of others as flesh and blood creatures to turning them into the 'other'. In Charmaine and Stand's world, there's hardly a principle in sight, just the necessity of expedience.

And it's not fantasy. From my own experiences through the credit crunch and beyond, I know just how fast one's principles can decay. I haven't actually had been tempted into intimacy with a chicken, but have been reduced on a couple of occasions to eating non free-range, something that I would never have believed a few years ago - all because of diminished financial resources and my lack of will power to just eat vegetables instead. Sounds a small thing, I know, but the first lost principle is the one agonised over the longest, the rest follow a lot more easily. And there have been more, one's that I'm not going to share here .

Loved the way the end exploded in colour, sound and farce - I can just see all those Elvises on the big screen. That last section was a welcome finale to the routine and order of the earlier, very disconcerting chapters detailing their time in the Positron Project.

I liked the layout of the book - thought it complemented the work well - how much input did you have in the layout, typefaces used, etc., and if 'not much', how much do you care about those sort of details in your own work?

Hello: Thank you -- glad you enjoyed. Yes, we never know how we ourselves might behave in a crunch unless we're actually there. I have the will power of a flea in many respects. Glad you liked the carnivalesque ending...

I do care about covers, layout, and typefaces quite a lot. I fool around with them... I used to have a small silk screen poster business back before Digital, and I designed some of my own book covers -- poetry ones.

@MrsTerryPratchett

In light of Mumsnet giving us a Preppers topic here and your very scary MaddAddam books... Are you prepared for the Apocalypse you describe so terrifyingly?

Haha, not really, though having grown up in the woods I'd probably be OK on the subject of mushrooms.

@Corygal

When I read your work I feel enormous relief, more than anything - like a cool glass of water in the middle of the night. And excitement as well, afterwards.

But one thing I don't understand about The Heart - do you like Stan? I was ok about him until he went along with Charmaine's op. Little beast.

Hello: I looove Stan. He is much put-upon, when you come to think of it. And yes, he does give in to temptation... He just wants to be the one who's there
when she wakes up. He didn't ARRANGE the thing!

We can't expect perfect behaviour from characters in books. Just plausible behaviour. For "perfect," try Sir Charles Grandison by Samuel Richardson. He's Very Good. He's Very Boring.

I don't have a question, I'm just lurking, in quiet awe. My lovely high school English teacher recommended The Handmaid's Tale to me and I have been a huge fan of yours ever since. I've not read The Heart Goes Last Yet, but I'm hoping to find if in my Christmas stocking