Review: Choke Collar (Positron #2) by Margaret Atwood

Choke Collar by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second episode in Margaret Atwood's serialized Positron story, about a near-future society where people willingly go to prison to get out of their crippling debt.

Where we last left off, Stan was fantasizing about the sexy note he found under his fridge. He assumes it's written by the woman who lives in the house he shares six months of the year, alternating, with another married couple who have also signed up for the Positron program. He was wrong, and he now finds himself forced to reenact the recorded encounters between his wife and her husband. His cheating wife, meanwhile, is stuck in the prison for an awfully long time, and demoted to laundry folding, to boot.

All is not as it seems, neither in the prison nor Stan's house. He gets a glimpse at a little more of the picture. Any reader, meanwhile, might see shades of 1984 in the world Atwood is positing.

Having read
  In Other Worlds

has enhanced my appreciation of this serial novel, but it's not necessary. It clarifies some of the concepts and gets into Atwood's head a bit.

I was glad I picked up the third episode for my Kindle before I started reading this, because the cliffhanger was almost more than I could take.

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