Plastic
A Novel
-
-
1.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • For fans of Interior Chinatown and American War, a surreal, hilarious, and sneakily profound debut novel that casts our current climate of gun violence and environmental destruction in a surprising new mold.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN • OUR CULTURE • SO MANY DAMN BOOKS • CLIMATE & CAPITAL MEDIA
"[Plastic] deserves applause....Raises urgent questions about climate change, political violence, and spirituality with high intelligence....Wondrous." - The New York Times Book Review
Erin is a plastic girl living in a plastic world. Every day she eats a breakfast of boiled chicken, then conveys her articulated body to Tablet Town, where she sells other figurines Smartbodies: wearable tech that allows full, physical immersion in a virtual world, a refuge from real life’s brutal wars, oppressive governmental monitoring, and omnipresent eco-terrorist insurgency. If you cut her, she will not bleed—but she and her fellow figurines can still be cracked or blown apart by gunfire or bombs, or crumble away from nuclear fallout. Erin, who's lost her father, sister, and the love of her life, certainly knows plenty about death.
An attack at her place of work brings Erin another too-intimate experience, but it also brings her Jacob: a blind figurine whom she comforts in the aftermath, and with whom she feels an almost instant connection. For the first time in years, Erin begins to experience hope—hope that until now she's only gleaned from watching her favorite TV show, the surrealist retro sitcom “Nuclear Family.” Exploring the wild wonders of the virtual reality landscape together, it seems that possibly, slowly, Erin and Jacob may have a chance at healing from their trauma. But then secrets from Erin's family's past begin to invade her carefully constructed reality, and cracks in the facade she's constructed around her life threaten to reveal everything vulnerable beneath.
Both a crypto-comedic dystopian fantasy and a deadly serious dissection of our own farcical pre-apocalypse, Scott Guild’s debut novel is an achingly beautiful, disarmingly welcoming, and fabulously inventive look at the hollow core of modern American society—and a guide to how we might reanimate all its broken plastic pieces.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Guild's zany debut depicts a near future reshaped by a devastating war, climate disaster, and virtual reality. After people resort to burning chicken bones as an energy source, the consequent "HeatLeap" prompts eco-terrorists to stage violent attacks on businesses. When the terrorists strike a tech retail outlet, an employee named Erin who is a "figurine" made of plastic comes to the aid of Jacob, a customer and fellow figurine who is blind. The two begin a tentative relationship, both in the "real" world and in the simulated "Smartworld." Meanwhile, Erin starts receiving warnings of impending attacks on her in Smartworld from avatars. Guild styles the story of Erin's life as a television series, with chapters framed as synopses of "episodes" and occasional monologues to the audience. Alongside Erin's "show" are descriptions of a sitcom called Nuclear Family, set in the first year after the war and depicting a Romeo and Juliet–like teenage romance between a plastic figurine and a waffle. Though the novel's considerations of such weighty issues as terrorism and the despoliation of the planet are generally skin-deep, Guild shines in his impressions of a speculative world where waffles are viewed with suspicion in the plastic community for "crav the syrup of power above all else." It's great fun watching Guild arrange the pieces of this inspired allegory.
Customer Reviews
What is this? A joke?
Is this book just chatbot gone lazy? Can’t be. Chatbot has some talent. This author has none