Margaret Atwood's "The Heart Stops Lasts" is Dystopian Society and Dysfunctional Affairs of the Heart

Margaret Atwood is one of Canada's most prominent novelists.  Born in 1939, Atwood is highly acclaimed for her sci-fi futuristic dystopian novels (The Handmaid's Tale & Oryx and Crake).  She's also writes essays & political commentary seeking social reform & environmental conservation.  "The Heart Stops Lasts" fits the dystopian genre yet it generates more heat entwining sexual mores & prison reform.  Stan (the man) and Charmaine (charming & gentle) are newly married. They're full of hopes & dreams that come crashing down soon after their vows & are now living in a survivalist "road warrior" world as the economics comes crashing down.  They live in their car in constant fear & long for normalcy.  The US is now a dystopian nightmare & the reality of their dire circumstances leads them to an experimental, self-contained community; plenty to eat, clean living conditions, safe & secure behind a citadel.  This haven is known as Consilience & Positron.  It has a few catches.  First, you have to be selected.  Then, you must sign away your right to ever leave.  One more thing, while you get to live to in clean safe surroundings, proffered plenty to eat, every other month you must live within the confines of a benign prison.  The sexes are separated & the prison requires you to share a cell & do assigned work.  The alternating month outside the prison also comes with work assignments but it feels like heaven to Charmaine compared to the barbaric conditions outside the compound.  Atwood is at her best constructing a society that credibly & chillingly starts to constrain any pretense of liberation.  Humans are hardwired for survival & for disavowing responsibility for one's own actions.  What may have started as a misguided plan for a utopian society by politicians to create jobs, save taxpayers money & avoid anarchy is too easily corruptible by oligarchs.  The new society model misappropriates people's bodies & eliminates all human rights.   Added intrigue is produced by sexual oppression & animalistic libidos (hints of Huxley's 1984).  The infinite suggestibility of the human mind is also examined.  Atwood cuts into both Stan & Charmaine's minds; an increasingly twisted & troubling place to dwell.  The title "The Heart Stops Lasts" refers to a procedure never referred to as murder but undesirables or bodies desired for their parts are drugged causing the heart to stop.  Poor Charmaine, they Positron big wigs "expected her to use her head & discard her heart, but it wasn't so easy because the heart goes last and hers was still clinging on inside her all the time."  Don't deceive yourself.  Looks are deceiving.  Poor Charmaine may not be as pure as perceived.  There are boundaries & then there are boundaries.