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.

“One of the most important writers in English today” – Germaine Greer

“Margaret Atwood is the quiet Mata Hari, the mysterious, violent figure … who pits herself against the ordered, too clean world like an arsonist” – Michael Ondaatje

“It's easy to appreciate the grand array of Margaret Atwood's works … in all their power and grace and variety. When I think of it, and put it together with her writerly gifts and achievements, it takes my breath away” – Alice Munro

“Atwood is a poet. Scarcely a sentence of her quick, dry yet avid prose fails to do useful work” – John Updike