Different Girl

Dahlquist, Gordon. The Different Girl. 2013. 240 p., ISBN 978-0424-42597-7. FIC DAH on the library shelves.

On a sunny desert island, four identical girls live and learn how to be girls. Veronika and her three sisters, Caroline, Isobel, and Eleanor, are robots, and they learn through a careful manipulation of their environment, their caregivers Irene and Robert always ready to encourage further questioning. The introduction of an unplanned variable, a shipwreck survivor is discovered by Veronika, changes their lives. The robots are confronted by a real girl, May, and the differences between the sisters and May become harder to explain. Can the girls, robot and human, learn to live together?

Though it is immediately clear to the reader that the girls are different, Dahlquist’s use of the first person allows a glimpse into Veronika’s learning and evolution from one of four into a unique individual with her own interests, developing a sense of right and wrong and drifting from her sisters as they acquire different knowledge. In what is assumed to be the first in a series, the action is slow to build, and even by the end it remains unclear what the purpose of the girls is, or why they were on the island. What the girls learn is intriguing, but without further hints in the writing about the wider world or what dangers dwell there for the robots, it may be hard for readers to stay with the story.