Plastic

A Novel

By: Scott Guild

Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Will Damron

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.

©2024 Scott Guild (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

MOST ANTICIPATED: NYLON • CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS • NEW SCIENTIST • REACTOR • LITERARY HUB • BOOK RIOT • GIZMODO • OUR CULTURE MAG • KMUW

“Call it George Saunders Barbie. . . . 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

This book really made me think

I enjoyed the world building from the author. It was really creative and clever. I wanted to keep reading, just to find out how it all came together. I was not disappointed.

I also enjoyed the readers. Especially the female reader. She had a depth and warmth that was very likable.

A book that really sticks with you

This book is fascinating, the story and characters draw you in, the world feels very near to our own. It’s incredibly dystopian and sad with moments of joy along the way.

Unique

Everything in this book is unexpected. So far off and close to the real world. The background music was also nice.

Revolutionary

Reading plastic, for me was much the same as the first time I read 1984. Only with plastic I didn’t realize how important of a book it would turn out to be. A truly masterful work of experimental fiction. I only hope they don’t ruin it with a bland tv show.