This was rough, for me. I think this was a satire? If so, some of the problem lies with me. I'm notoriously bad at picking up on satire, and 99% of the time, I don't enjoy it much. That's my disclosure. And if anything, I hope this is satire, because otherwise, this really didn't work for me. I think my main issue is the disconnect between the tone and the content. The book starts with the best kind of dystopia - one that's scary in its description, but scarier in that you can see how easily things can degrade to that point. Of course it's not today's reality ... but it doesn't take much creative thought to see how we could end up like Charmaine and Stan, living in their car after losing jobs and housing in a depressed economy. 
 So the premise is solid, and Atwood begins to explore it with her usual skill and wit. Just as The Handmaid's Tale showed us what happens when religious fundamentalism runs riot, and Oryx and Crake showed us what happens when pandemics and environmental collapse strikes, I was ready for her take on what a dystopia born of economic collapse will look like. The premise was especially scary to me as someone who went through the 2008 recession newly married, pregnant, and with a job loss in the family - there but for fortune, it really wasn't hard to see myself in Charmaine and Stan's situation. 
 But then, the book goes sailing off the rails. The exaggeration of the characters and the 1950's-ish dystopia inside Consilience is almost cartoonish. We're expected to accept that human beings are so awful that men are (view spoiler)[having sex with chickens (hide spoiler)] after just a month of being in prison. What would be a fascinating exploration of feeling exploited versus being exploited instead becomes a convoluted mess of spouse swapping, forced euthanasia, organ trafficking, Elvis sex bots, and Stepford Wives being sexually imprinted onto whoever pays for them (view spoiler)[and the occasional mistake where someone is imprinted onto inanimate objects like a knitted teddy bear (hide spoiler)]. I just couldn't take it seriously. 
 And this is where the satire thing comes in - if it's satire, is it meant to be taken seriously? Beats me. Long story short, I'll read anything Margaret Atwood writes, but apparently I may not always like or appreciate it.