By the author of The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments and Alias Grace.

'Clara', she said, 'do you think I'm normal?''I'd say you're almost abnormally normal, if you know what I mean.'

Marian is determinedly ordinary, waiting to get married. She likes her work, her broody flatmate and her sober fiancé Peter. All goes well at first, but Marian has reckoned without an inner self that wants something more, that calmly sabotages her careful plans, her stable routine - and her digestion.

Margaret Atwood's first novel is both a scathingly funny satire of consumerism and a heady exploration of emotional cannibalism.