Sad to say, I’ve still never read anything by Margaret Atwood… This is a shocking state of affairs. Anyway, the author has a new novel coming out in September 2015 — The Heart Goes Last (Bloomsbury) — and it sounds rather interesting:

Living in their car, surviving on tips, Charmaine and Stan are in a desperate state. So, when they see an advertisement for Consilience, a ‘social experiment’ offering stable jobs and a home of their own, they sign up immediately. All they have to do in return for suburban paradise is give up their freedom every second month – swapping their home for a prison cell. At first, all is well. But then, unknown to each other, Stan and Charmaine develop passionate obsessions with their ‘Alternates,’ the couple that occupy their house when they are in prison. Soon the pressures of conformity, mistrust, guilt and sexual desire begin to take over.

The information I’ve found on Goodreads (but nowhere else) suggests that this is a collection of four serialized stories originally published separately: I’m Starved for You, Choke Collar, Erase Me and The Heart Goes Last.

According to Amazon, the book is to be published by Nan A. Talese/Knopf in the US, but I couldn’t find mention of it on the publisher’s website.