The best speculative authors, like Atwood, take a modern trend or problem and spin it out to an extreme “solution” that serves as a social commentary enlightening readers about the absurdity of how we have acclimated to the seeds of absurdity.

In The Heart Goes Last, Atwood presents the community of Consilience, which combines free prison labor as a profit booster with house-sharing to eliminate homelessness. The catch is that you need to sign up for life—living a comfortable middle-class life one month, and living in prison providing free labor the next. Not a bad deal for currently homeless Stan and Charmaine, who are living in their car amidst a nationwide economic collapse.

Of course, not all is as it seems in Consilience.

Lighter and more slap-dash than some of Atwood’s novels (there are sex bots!), The Heart Goes Last is a satirical look at the escalating depravity Consilience leaders engage in to turn a profit, role-playing gone amok, and how the “boring” love that drives a person for more excitement (and sex bots!) is what a person most misses once it’s gone. Funny, absurd, and ultimately redeeming, it’s a fun winter weekend novel and didn’t have me checking the locks on the doors and waking me with nightmares about the state of the world like some other Atwood books.

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