bibliogramma | Sangu Mandanna: The Lost Girl (Reply)

Sangu Mandanna's debut YA novel The Lost Girl tells the story of a young woman who is an echo, a being deliberately created and trained to replace another person if they die. Her 'other' - the person she is living only to take the place of - is a girl called Amarra, whose parents commissioned an echo because they could not bear the thought if a life without their daughter. Genetically identical to her other, she receives daily information about events in Amarra's life, which she must memorise. She can read only the books Amarra reads, study only what Amarra studies, learn only the hobbies and skills Amarra learns.

But she is powerfully aware of herself as a separate individual - she has her own interests (one of which, art, she secretly pursues when her guardians and trainers are not around) and she has given herself a name of her own - Eva.

She lives on borrowed time - if her other's parents change their minds about having an echo of their daughter, then she will simply be terminated. If she is found breaking the regulations set for echoes by the Loom - the secretive organisation which creates echoes - she will be terminated. And there are 'hunters' - vigilantes who hate the idea of the echoes - who will kill her if they find out what she is.

Eva's life is quiet - except when she takes risks and breaks the rules, fortunate in having guardians who don't report her. Until the day Amarra dies, and she must travel halfway around the world, from England, where she was created and trained, to Bangalore, where Amarra's parents wait for their daughter brought back to life. But can she become Amarra? And if she cannot - can she ever find a way to be herself?

Reading the set-up for the novel's action, I kept thinking of the clones in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go - another novel about artificially created people who are defined solely by what their existence means to others, who are not granted the status of humanity on their own. And who nonetheless are real people, despite being created to serve.

The course of Eva's struggle to escape what she was made to be, to have her own life, is full of danger, betrayal and loss, and the author leaves us with an ambiguous ending. But whatever one imagines happens after the last page is turned - and none of the possibilities are without pain and sacrifice - Eva has at least won the opportunity to make her own decisions.