Erin is a young plastic woman living in a plastic world that is not as fantastic as the songs would have us believe. Ecoterrorism is on the rise, and almost no figurine is untouched by loss. One day, as Erin makes her way to work at Tablet Town, where she sells wearable virtual reality tech called SmartBodies, a terrorist attack occurs, leading her to meet Jacob. Blind from birth, Jacob uses the SmartBody to see within the virtual world, and he and Erin spend their days exploring it together. As they grow closer, and the terrorism threat looms ever larger, Erin begins to fear she will lose Jacob to either an attack, or the secrets of her past.
First Line: The episode opens on a plastic woman driving home from work.
I’ve been excited about Plastic for a long time and checked it out at the library as soon as it was released, but for whatever reason (aka I’m dumb), I didn’t start it right away. In fact, I even had to renew the borrow once before I got to it. I’m kicking myself now because once I started it, I could not stop. I devoured this book and I loved it.
Plastic takes a futuristic, dystopian look at climate change and gun violence through an extremely surreal lens with plenty of dark humor.
This book is extremely unique. The chapters are structured as if they are episodes of a TV show, but it makes sense in the context of the book. The figurines talk in what feels at first like a sort of dumbed-down way. If you’ve ever seen that episode of the American version of The Office where Kevin starts talking strangely and he says “Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick,” it’s very much like that. It’s strange at first, but easy to get used to as it’s really just faster communication. Our way of speaking is even referred to as “old-fashioned dialect,” indicating that this is just the way english has evolved over time.
Sometimes you’re reminded that the figurines are made of plastic in the silliest ways, for example when two of them kissed and “their hard lips graze each other’s, a scratchy sound of plastic brushing plastic,” a line that pulled me back to my childhood, smushing Barbie faces together to make them kiss. Honestly, the fact that they’re plastic and the ways in which they live their plastic lives is a huge reason to read the book because the way Scott Guild translates everything from human body to plastic body is so interesting and fun. But it’s just one of many deep themes to consider. While the world within the book was plastic, it mirrored our own possible future so well that it gives the reader a lot to think about.
There’s also Plastic: The Album, which tells the story of Plastic through song, like a musical. I listened to a couple songs and they’re perfect, so full of emotion. I’m definitely looking forward to the album’s release on May 31.
I thoroughly enjoyed Plastic and I hope Scott Guild has something else in store for us!
Little Vermo Reviews 