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“The novel’s sustained W.T.F. brazenness deserves applause. . . . Plastic also earns comparisons to works by Tom McCarthy, Kazuo Ishiguro, and even Bertolt Brecht. Its rigorously superficial world manages to raise urgent questions about climate change, political violence, and spirituality with high intelligence.”
—Ryan Chapman, The New York Times Book Review
“Scott Guild has created something fascinating with his debut novel, Plastic. His book is filled with surrealism and dark comedy that makes real people out of plastic characters. They are truly complicated and three-dimensional and the reader can really identify with them. I know I sure did.”
—Doug Gordon, NPR
“With climate change, gun violence, and nuclear fallout, this dystopian comedy looks eerily similar to our world.”
—Beth Golay, NPR
“An epic music/novel project.”
—Brett Milano, The Boston Herald
“A dark and entertaining saga about a postapocalyptic world populated by plastic figurines, dominated by inescapable advertising, in thrall to virtual reality and fearful of increasing acts of eco-terrorism as well as government clampdowns. . . . Plastic is that rarest of publishing experiences, a story being told simultaneously in prose and music.”
—Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times
"A world constructed from strange and wondrous materials. A world that is deeply strange and deeply familiar, with language to match—funny, broken, sad, and beautiful. Evocative and highly original, Plastic is a captivating debut."
—Charles Yu, National Book Award–winning author of Interior Chinatown
"I don't know how to describe Scott Guild's Plastic, a stunningly brilliant novel, other than to say it is profound, hilarious, wrenching, bizarre, about an imaginary universe with incalculable complexities that is also somehow our own broken world. It's one of those books that will follow you around, into your dreams and your daily life. You have never read anything like it. Scott Guild is an endlessly inventive and deeply exciting writer, morbid and funny and strange and humane."
—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of This Book
“Intricately familiar, disturbingly surreal, and playfully interesting. Coming off the summer of Barbie, you might recognize Plastic’s protagonist, Erin. . . . Wonderfully inventive . . . Plastic is a major treat.”
—Sam Franzini, Our Culture Mag
“A surrealist romp that perfectly captures our modern anxieties.”
—Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books
"Equal parts funny and poignant, this debut is a deft examination of America and our collective humanity. Clever and wildly imaginative, Plastic has heartfelt heft."
—Parini Shroff, author of The Bandit Queens
"Plastic is one of the most strangely tender and tenderly strange books I've ever read. Scott Guild's language is transportive, and his attention to the characters peopling his unique world is deeply moving. This book is the real deal: fresh, utterly its own, full of both humor and pathos, and so utterly human (plastic skin aside)."
—Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother’s Lovers
"Few writers are more brilliant, captivating, and hilarious than Scott Guild. He is a visionary—and what he envisions is terrifying, yes, but also full of love, hope, and radiance. Plastic, with its large-hearted characters and riveting storytelling, will certainly turn out to be one of the best novels of the year."
—Deb Olin Unferth, author of Barn 8
"Plastic is a marvel, gimlet-eyed and utterly charming all at once. It’s one of those rare novels that has both big ideas and a big heart. I’m tantalized by its sci-fi grooviness but also moved by the dolls’ interiority, their assessment of their own humanity."
—Timothy Schaffert, author of The Perfume Thief
“Delightfully weird.”
—Alison Flood, New Scientist
“Guild’s novel is cinematic. With tones of Black Mirror’s ethical acuity and the quirkiness of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. . . . There remains a tenderness that is at times whimsical in the figurines’ demonstration of how trauma, grief, and disability are still entrenched in the human need for connection.”
—Lillian Liao, Booklist
“Guild shines in his impressions of a speculative world. . . . It’s great fun watching Guild arrange the pieces of this inspired allegory.”
—Publishers Weekly
"Guild works the parody and pathos well in this thoughtful entertainment, expertly managing to extract concern and sympathy for the plights of these plastic characters, as human as we are despite their occasionally squeaking leg hinges."
—Kirkus Reviews
About Plastic:
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 Smartbodies: wearable tech that immerses her fellow figurines in a virtual world, a refuge from real life’s brutal wars and eco-terrorist insurgency. If you cut her, she will not bleed—but figurines can still be cracked by gunfire or crumble from nuclear fallout. Erin, who’s lost her father and the love of her life, certainly knows plenty about death.
One day, a terror attack at work leads Erin to meet Jacob, a blind figurine with whom she feels an instant connection. Together they start to explore the wonders of the virtual reality landscape. But just as they begin to heal from their traumas, secrets from Erin’s past threaten to crack the facade she’s built around her life, revealing everything vulnerable beneath.
Both a dystopian comedy and a serious dissection of our own pre-apocalypse, Plastic is a fabulously inventive look at the hollow core of American society—and a guide to how we might reanimate all of its broken plastic pieces.