Spare and Found Parts
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Nell Crane has never held a boy’s hand.
In a city devastated by an epidemic, where survivors are all missing parts—an arm, a leg, an eye—Nell has always been an outsider. Her father is the famed scientist who created the biomechanical limbs that everyone now uses. But she’s the only one with her machinery on the inside: her heart. Since the childhood operation, she has ticked. Like a clock, like a bomb. And as her community rebuilds, everyone is expected to contribute to the society’s good . . . but how can Nell live up to her father’s revolutionary ideas when she has none of her own?
Then she finds a lost mannequin’s hand while salvaging on the beach, and inspiration strikes. Can Nell build her own companion in a world that fears advanced technology? The deeper she sinks into this plan, the more she learns about her city—and her father, who is hiding secret experiments of his own.
Sarah Maria Griffin’s haunting literary debut will entrance fans of Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking series, Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker, and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Creating life out of spare parts never seems to go well for mad scientists, but what if you’re just a lonely girl? Sarah Maria Griffin’s emotional roller coaster of a novel—set in a world where war and disease have leveled society—revolves around teenage misfit Nell, who lives with her father, a scientist who specializes in making high-tech artificial limbs. One day, Nell has a brainstorm: Since actual humans (like Oliver, the sweet but annoying guy who’s had a crush on her since they were kids) are too much to deal with, why not create the perfect boyfriend from scratch? Griffin nails both relatable teen angst and a strange vision of a post-dystopian world where antiscience bias has gained such a foothold in society that brilliant girls like Nell are seen as troublemakers or even dangerous threats. For our part, we adored Nell’s decidedly offbeat personality. Her story appeals to the dreamer in all of us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Could you make a soul out of spare and found parts?" It's been more than 100 years since an event known as the Turn, and people now live without the computers and technology that brought about destruction and sickness. Nell Crane lives with her father, Dr. Julian Crane, in the Pale, home to those born without limbs and other body parts. Julian creates wondrous mechanical limbs for those who need them, and Nell, self-conscious about her mechanical heart, is under pressure to present a creation of her own to the Youth Council. She longs to build something more impressive than the tiny bots she assembles, and out of this longing an idea is born: Nell will build a boy, someone who will see past her scar. Irish author Griffin's lovely U.S. debut is a quietly effective cautionary tale about a world still reeling from past mistakes. The steady ticking of Nell's heart provides a drumbeat for her aching loneliness, her grief over the death of her mother, and her quest despite catastrophic betrayal to understand what it means to be alive. Ages 14 up.
