How To Say Goodbye In Robot

It started out slowly and awkwardly- you could tell the author tried too hard to introduce the narrator. After that, it got much better. New girl in prep school meets freak boy, strangeness ensues. ( )

When Bea moves to a new town, she’s surprised to find herself becoming friends with Jonah, a boy who has been dubbed “Ghost Boy” since middle school by all of his classmates. Pale, withdrawn, and closed off to the entire world, Jonah presents an interesting challenge to Bea, and she becomes drawn to him. Together, the two of them create an unlikely friendship that runs deep but never quite swerves into a romance. As Jonah’s fragile world begins to break, Bea wonders if she can help him recover himself.

Certainly one of the quirkier novels to grace the YA shelves, Standiford’s beautiful, haunting novel about a complicated friendship and the pangs of growing up is pretty captivating. Bea has moved around for much of her life and has learned not to make connections to people. When she starts her senior year at a new school and meets Jonah, the king of not making connections, she feels oddly drawn to him. The two of them begin a relationship that many reviewers have tried to classify as a platonic friendship, but that doesn’t quite do them justice.

Jonah and Bea are drawn to each other, and they find solace in each other’s presence. Bea seems, at times, to want more than friendship from Jonah, but he’s so lost in his own world that he seems incapable of meeting her needs. It may be that Jonah is asexual, but that concept is never really explored. At any rate, his relationship with Bea is not romantic, but it’s not just friendship, either, as both of them seem to want to keep the other all to themselves. It’s messy and complex, and very, very real.

What Standiford manages to do very well is remarkable. In addition to creating weird characters who also seem very real, she keeps a plot that seems preposterous at times from veering off into the ridiculous. Nothing that happens seems out of the realm of possibility, even when Jonah and Bea act a little on the absurd side. This was my one worry when I was reading the book, and I was happy to find that Standiford straddles the line perfectly.

This is not a happy book, despite the pink cover. The title tells you that this will be a book with at least some goodbyes, and it is. At times funny and at times very, very sad, this is a book that stays with you after you finish the last page. Highly, highly recommended, y’all. ( )

Bea's just starting her senior year at a tiny private school. She's the new kid, and alphabetically arranged next to the Weird Kid in assembly, classes, lockers, everything. Jonah may be a little weird in his way--his classmates have been calling him a ghost since seventh grade--but he's also the best friend Bea's ever had.

Oh man I want to give this book to everyone now, because it's the most beautiful example of friend-love, of non-romantic love, of true friendship, that I've seen in a teen novel, um, ever. It's not that it's particularly lyrical or poetic--I mean, Bea describes herself as a robot--but it's so accurate and honest and so so wonderful. Everybody should read this book. At least, everyone who's ever felt like an outcast, which is probably like 90% of us who went to middle school? ( )

So I read this book because it was given to me. I liked it, and I could see how it would get a certain cult following, but I didn't love it. And I don't know if that's because I don't totally understand guy/girl friendships because I've never really had any, so I can't relate to that part of the book, or the way I totally knew what was going on with the parents from the way they were first described, or whether it just wasn't right for me. I would definitely recommend it. After all, people thought Frankie Landau-Banks was one of the best books of last year, and I had a bit of a hard time relating to that one too. ( )

The title "How to Say Goodbye in Robot" caught my attention and intrigued me. So of course I had to read it.

The main character, Beatrice, is the voice of this novel. She moves to a new school and befriends a misfit named Jonah who is known as "Ghost Boy" because of his pale skin as well as a horrible joke that was started in middle school. Bea dubs herself "robot girl" after her mother calls her a robot for her inability to mourn the death of her pet gerbil. The two bond over late night calls to a talk radio station and each other's less-than-conventional home life.

Many of the overall themes of this novel deal with serious issues like love, loss, and family, with a little bit of humor thrown in. Author Natalie Standiford does a great job at developing the quirky and tender frienship between Bea and Jonah.