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Lunch » Tags » Books » Reviews » Girl Parts

Girl Parts

1 rating: 2.0

A book by John M. Cusick

Gr 9 Up–With cold detachment, David views a classmate's video blog while she deliberately downs a toxic cocktail. He and his peers seem unfazed having witnessed her online suicide. The adults, shocked out of their reverie, notice that their … see full wiki

Tags: Books

Author: John M. Cusick

Publisher: Candlewick

1 review about Girl Parts

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A.I. For the Young Adult Market

Feb 21, 2011

by tomtom13
posted in Cafe Libri: Reviewing Books & More

Rating:

Our society is becoming oversaturated with technology and sex. It's quite easy for a person to have hundreds of friends on Facebook, but not one friend in real life. As for sex, technology has allowed the idea of sex to be everywhere. Devoid of most adult guidance and taught by the technology they surround themselves with that they shouldn't trust adults anyway, our youth are in a terrible state. GIRL PARTS is a book that examines the relationship between technology and sex and how the saturation of both is affecting young people.

The book opens when a girl named Nora Vogel commits suicide on the Internet. Several of her classmates from the private school she attends were online and watched her kill herself. No one made any attempt to stop her. Suicides can cause mass confusion at a school, but beyond a handful of people, her death seems to have affected no one. School officials become just as concerned about his as they did Nora's suicide. A psychologist is brought in to examine all the students, with special attention to those who watched the suicide online. It's discovered that many of the students have "disassociation disorder". The school counselor begins prescribing an experimental program for many of these students to deal with their addiction to technology which has brought about their disassociation disorders. The "cure" is a relationship robot from the Sokora Company.

David Sun is the first person to get one of the robots. She is a redheaded vixen named Rose that only wants to serve David. If things become too physical between them too fast, Rose shoots David with a severe electric shock. David takes things easy and follows the protocol. Small changes in David's behavior occur. However, months later when David thinks he's going to get some action, he discovers that Rose has no female private parts. He abandons Rose. Forsaken by the one she was created to love, Rose tries to drown herself in a lake.

On the other side of town is Charlie Nuvola. Charlie's not like most of the kids at his school. He doesn't come from an extremely wealthy family. He likes learning and he takes pleasure in the small things in life. He's kind, sweet, and generous. However, the school counselor is concerned that Charlie might be "disassociated", too, because he doesn't have many friends and doesn't fit in. Charlie doesn't think so. He just thinks most of the people at school are jerks like David. Then he sees a red-haired girl drowning in a lake. David jumps in and saves her. He eventually learns that Rose is a robot. Yet, she soon becomes his closest friend. However, there is a danger because the Sokora Company is hunting for Rose. Any robots rejected by their owners are supposed to be dismantled. Rose was rejected and is now a renegade being hunted by the company that manufactured her. It's left to Charlie to figure out how to protect Rose, while at the same time allowing her burgeoning personality as an individual to grow.

The concept in GIRL PARTS is an intriguing one. There were parts of the book I really enjoyed. I think the development of the characters is probably the strongest part of the book. However, the real weakness of the book is the execution. So much time is spent developing the characters. The story is interesting and the plot, which begins rather slowly, quickly builds to what should be an exciting finale, but instead concludes with a disrupted coda. I'm not sure if the conclusion is supposed to tie into the overall message about the need to reconnect with real people and the dangers of technology or what, but I really felt that the conclusion is too abrupt, just like the conclusion of this review.

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