Different

Hello All, sorry about the crazy timing of my posts, but work is happening at all hours...so I guess is this blog :-)  Just finished The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist.  I had heard a ton of good things about it from various sources and the cover was yellow...and we all know my weird obsession with yellow covers.  It is not a long book, I read it over the course of two days, but could have easily knocked it out in couple of hours, but it is packed pretty full.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Veronika is one of four girls who live on a remote island.  The four girls are identical except for the color of their hair.  Veronika has red hair, Isobel has lemon yellow hair, Caroline has brown hair and Eleanor has black hair.  The story is told in Veronika's voice and lends an innocent air to the whole book.  We watch as the four girls have lessons, take naps and live a very simple basic life.  The girls are told that their parents died in a plane crash and that they were taken to the island to live.  Right off the bat you can tell that there is something different about these girls.  The girls are all told to take a walk and observe various things around the island for a specific amount of time and then report back.  They at first find it difficult to separate and make their own decisions on where to go, but it gets easier over time.  Veronika eventually even goes so far as to make a decision to stay past her allotted time to continue to study something.  The girls are constantly questioned and taught to think about things, but seem to be very well cared for by the only other people on the island.  Irene and Robbert.  The lives on the island are interrupted by the arrival of May, the different girl.  When she first see's Veronika and her sisters she screams, letting us know that they are even more different then originally thought.  May's arrival changes everything and the girls, especially Veronika and Caroline start to display curiosity and start making their own decisions about May.  Eventually we find out that May was on a boat with her Uncle and his friend, and that the boat they live in was attacked.  This caused the boat to blow up and May to wash up on the island.  Their is a constant curiosity on the girls part and a constant fear/frustration/curiosity on May's part as Robbert and Irene try and figure out what to do with her.  Irene and Robbert try and continue the girls lessons, adding in more questions and trying to get them to think.

 Eventually Robbert tells the girls that they were built by 8 mothers and 8 fathers who were on the plane that crashed, but the plane did not crash, it was blown up on purpose and the plane with the girls, Irene and Robbert escaped.  Apparently in the future (I'm assuming this is future Earth although it is never clearly stated) it seems that people are afraid of the AI/robot/cyborgs (again never fully explained) that the girls are.  It seems from the vague tidbits we get that there are schools that all children go to that tends to brain wash them into a certain style of thinking.  Eventually another boat comes to the island, scaring May into taking the four girls into hiding, while Irene and Robbert greet the boat.  Caroline decides she need to go get Robberts notebook and leaves the other girls.  While they are hiding the people on the boat apparently shoot Irene and Robbert, destroy the little compound they had been living in and leave.  Caroline shows up with the notebook, but is broken and falls to her "death" on the cliffs below.  The remaining three girls and May use the notebook to rebuild the little compound and are living there still.
This book is different, it is less of a story and more of an idea.  The point of this book is not to explain what is going on in the outside world, though we get a few hints of a possible dystopia, the point is more about the girls and how they think.  If I had to pick a point to this book...I'm not sure what it would be, and yet it is fascinating all the same.  The decision to use one of the four AI girls as the voice of this book was spot on.  It gave an uninformed, yet present voice to all the happenings.  Everything we know is from an almost emotionless, yet innocent perspective and it makes you think differently about things...which may be the point.  The patience and obvious care that Irene and Robbert have for the girls, obviously goes beyond just programming a machine, a certain parent child bond seems to be apparent in their actions.  The

disconnectedness, yet bond the four girls share is an odd one, but it makes a weird sort of sense.  I think my favorite part about May was her frustration in the four girls.  They knew they were constructs, yet they thought of themselves as alive and sentient.  May on the other hand at times had a hard time getting past their differentness, sometimes letting the idea that they were machines get in the way of getting to know them.  In the end though May bonded with them and called them friends.  This book is a really different (there is that word again) mix of man and machine, thinking and feeling, logic and intuition.  It is really hard to talk about, because it is really hard to explain.  Go read it and tell me what you think.  I give it 7 out of 10 AI's
At what point does a machine become human?  At what point does a human become a machine?  Is this a really heavy book for YA or am I just older then I thought?