TITLE: The Girl With All the Gifts
AUTHOR: M.R. Carey
GENRE: General Fiction
PUBLISHED: January 14, 2014
RATING: ★★★★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon.com
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Description: Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her "our little genius."
Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.
Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.
Review: Before we begin, I must admit my personal preferences. I am a sucker for a great cover and title. The school bus yellow color of the cover with the girl's silhouette on the cover is arresting. Is the girl raising her arms for a hug, is she embracing the world, or is she intimidating someone? Could be any of those. And the book, The Girl With All the Gifts is oh so cleverly titled and a reference to Melanie's school lesson about Pandora's box and how it is full of evil things that are unleashed on the world.
Right away, I think we all suspect something is really wrong with Melanie. And yes, I have to admit her primary fault. I cannot possibly write a good review for this book without without disclosing Melanie's big flaw. Ready? She is a zombie.
Now, as a general rule, I hate the zombie genre. In fact, I hate when I am stuck somewhere with my husband and son and they start speculating about the "zombie apocalypse" because this conversation could take hours. Also, it can continue unabated and can be renewed at anytime, the possibilities seem to be endless. As a side note, if you ever find yourself in Las Vegas you absolutely must visit the Zombie Apocalypse Store - even I had fun there.
Anyway, as a result of zombie saturation here at home, this is probably one of the very last books I would have ever picked to read, I came across it here at Mobilism quite by accident. I had never heard of this author, the names M.R. Carey or Mike Carey meant nothing to me, I was not impressed one bit, although apparently I should have been looking at his bio. I got impressed after I read this book. You see, in this book, zombies are people too. That's right, there are "second generation" zombies, all children, who are sort of "half zombies" or actually "hungries" as they are called in the book, who are sentient beings with thoughts, desires, emotions, intelligence. That is what makes this book so interesting to me, the non-zombie-liking reader. Sure there is violence, but not as much as you would think, and not all of it senseless. And sometimes, when he could have very well written another tedious bloody scene, he cuts it off, and we must imagine what happened. Lovely, Mr. Carey, thank you for not overwhelming me with brain eating and blood spurting, you kept me reading!
I have no idea if this is an original zombie type of book, for all I know Mr. Carey could have lifted this plot directly from the other zombie novels I've not been reading. In a way, the plot is probably very typical of zombie books, there are free roving survivalist types in a post apocalyptic world, there are military enclaves with people in them, and there are zombies, oh so very many zombies. The plot carries on, some of the characters are rote and simple: The Newbie Green Army Guy, The Old Jaded Army Guy, The Mad Scientist, I didn't give a crap about any of those characters. But Miss Justineau? And Melanie herself? Well, the author made them come alive for me. I don't know if Mike Carey will be winning any of those fancypants awards that are passed out every year, and I'm assuming he is probably not a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, but yet he kept me (a bit of a book snob) entranced the entire time.
“you can't save people from the world. There's nowhere else to take them.”
― M.R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts
With that in mind, as I read the ending, I actually got a chill. The whole scope of a new world opened up, wrapped up neatly with a big bow on it. Oh Mr. Carey, we are ready for the sequel. As I read the last page, I awarded this book the fifth star.
I appreciated the the way the author explained how he got the idea for the novel - from the horrifying Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis
On a personal note, with this book fresh in my mind, recently we took a long road trip and I entertained my family by regaling them with the description of the book and also noted how the author got his idea. Of course, my spouse knew all about this zombie ant fungus and cut me off mid-sentence to babble further lurid details. Then after he finished his lecture, he wanted to immediately read this book. Since he reads about 3 books a year, I consider this a personal victory.
It was not my normal genre either, but I was pleasantly surprised. Mike Carey is very talented and I look forward to reading his other books and I will certainly look for him at Comic-Con or other similar gatherings. I am very impressed.