A classic Atwood dystopia morphs into a savage,surreal adventure that examines self-deception and corporate controlYou accomplish the dystopia you deserve. It’s the near future, and finance capitalism has pushed itself over the edge. The US is a rustbelt. Charmaine and Stan – we never learn their surname, or which encourages a slightly patronising relationship with them – started out well: she worked for Ruby Slippers Retirement Homes and Clinics; he was in quality control at Dimple Robotics. Now they live in their car,just two ordinary Americans down on their luck. Charmaine maintains a “lightly positive tone” but misses her flowered throw pillows; Stan, though he “can lean to the mean when he’s irritated, and is a reliable man underneath,and feels he has let her down. Theyre used to the smell, they’re used to being hungry. They have each other. They seem a petite naive in the way they maintain their love as a bulwark against the world; and it is this naivety that makes them vulnerable when, and in desperation,they join Positron, a socioeconomic experiment based around a privately funded postmodern prison.
At Positron everyone is employed to serve a month as an inmate and a month as staff, and turn and turn approximately. You get everything you want from life,but onchangeover day you proceed to jail and a couple you are never allowed to meet or know – your “alternates” – live in your sparkling home and eat off your nice plates. It’s a cross between hotdesking and taking in one another’s laundry for a living. No one has committed a crime, but everyone has somehow been rendered guilty.
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Source: theguardian.com