Figurines’ tale filled with humanity
The world created in Scott Guild’s debut novel “Plastic” is embroiled in authoritarianism, nuclear war, climate change, terrorism, invasive technology, racism ... Now imagine that environment populated by Barbie dolls, albeit a generic version (called “figurines”) with similar composition, nylon hair, hinged joints and lack of blood when injured.
To cope with the dystopia they live in, figurines look to the Church of Divine Acceptance, a TV show called “Nuclear Family,” mood-altering substances or anxiety medication. The ultimate escape is owning a Smartbody. It allows users to enter the limitless virtual landscape, and figurine Erin James sells the devices at Tablet Town.
Late to work one day, Erin pulls into Tablet Town’s parking lot and nearly becomes a victim of terrorism when a bomb goes off in the store. She’s not injured, but her co-worker Owen is inside. As Erin checks the Smart Survivor app on her phone to see if he’s OK, a Good Samaritan Alert pops up and leads her to Jacob, a legally blind figurine who needs her help.
Up to this point, Erin has been “blummo.” She’s lost nearly everything: her boyfriend, her sister and her father. The encounter with Jacob will change her life completely, whether she’s ready or not.
Much of “Plastic” reads like a script for a TV show with scene changes and camera movements included. Erin narrates sections: Voice-over is denoted with italics; a different font is used when she speaks directly to the camera. Sometimes a spotlight comes up, and she sings. (Guild, songwriter and guitarist for the New Collisions, created “Plastic: The Album” to accompany the text.) Woven in are episodes of Erin’s favorite TV show, “Nuclear Family,” about a figurine and a waffle who fall in love as nuclear war looms, adding layers that amplify the notion of surveillance.
“Plastic” is a weird, sometimes puzzling and complicated book, but an affecting one with way more depth and humanity than its title would let on. — Maren Longbella, Minneapolis Star Tribune
A Black woman, forced into an intimate
relationship with the white man who controls her every move, flees to freedom via an underground railroad of sympathetic strangers, and then grapples with what freedom really means.
That sounds like a description of events in a Civil War-era novel but, in fact, it’s “The Blueprint,” set not in the past but in 2030. Slavery isn’t what it’s called anymore, but it’s back in Rae Giana Rashad’s provocative novel.
In Rashad’s alternate timeline, there was a second civil war in 1954. In its aftermath, the country is ruled by the Order of wealthy white men, with only “non-restricted” Louisiana as an escape, and 20-year-old Black Texan Solenne has been the concubine of a possible future president for
‘THE BLUEPRINT’
By Rae Giana Rashad; Harper, 304 pages, $30. five years.
In 2030, choice does not exist for Black women, and although Solenne believes she loves Bastien Martin, she also knows he routinely makes decisions that rob her people of their rights. It’s a complicated headspace, and Rashad captures all of the ambiguities the relationship implies as Solenne decides to flee to New Orleans.
“The Blueprint” skillfully employs multiple timelines. One includes reflections from Solenne’s early days with Bastien, and another is in the present, so we meet her simultaneously falling under the spell of and rejecting his control. A third timeline is a history Solenne writes, honoring an enslaved ancestor named Henriette, whose life Solenne begins to realize is not so different from her own.
Rashad is terrific at characterization — we feel deeply Solenne’s confusion, pain and hope. Rashad isn’t as good at plot, so it’s not always clear what the rules of the Order are or how Solenne skirts them. But — in chapters dedicated to characters whose significance only becomes clear at the end — Solenne’s spirit echoes on every page of “The Blueprint.”