Review: Plastic Soul
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 13, 2013
This coming of age story follows a college student finding her place in the world. It does a great job making us feel for Tess and ride with her through her search for the sense of belonging she has never felt with her adoptive aunt and uncle, who tolerated her but kept her at arms' length from the privileges and affections they gave their own daughters. She went instead to older men, with great emotional swings of her self-esteem and sense of control.Allusions to mental illness and other issues add to the interest and explanation of behavior, and the story moves along nicely. The path she finds, and its relation to the title, is not foreshadowed in the story, so feels a little forced, but it is a relief in some ways and an interesting concept.Unlike another reviewer, I thought the epilogue helped explain her upbringing and some rationale for the aloof upbringing she experienced that set her life in the direction it took.