The couple can't believe it when they are asked to come and test for a new living community named Consilience. If they are accepted, they will be given a house inside a walled community and provided with food and safety. There is a prison in the community and the scheme works this way. Every house is shared by two families. One month the first couple is on the outside working a job provided by the community while the other couple spends the month in prison doing work that benefits the prison. The next month the two couples trade places. Once you are in, you cannot leave. Stan and Charmaine eagerly accept.
At first, it's like a dream come true. Then doubts start to set in, especially when Stan finds out that Charmaine has been meeting the other couple's man on switchover days for an affair. The longer they are there, the more they start to see things going on in the prison that aren't right. Things like people who disappear. Things like Charmaine's job which is to administer a final shot to those whose time is up. Soon they realize that they have signed up for a nightmare but how to escape when every move and word they speak is monitored?
This is a lesser known Atwood novel but it fits in the dystopian genre and as a message against governmental authority. Everything is exaggerated but sometimes that is what it takes to make a point. There are sexbots, knitting circles, men and women who dress up like either Elvis or Marilyn Monroe and whose time can be rented, organ transplants for sale and lots of other plot points that demonstrate what happens when one trades freedom for security. This book is recommended for readers of science fiction and dystopian fiction.
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