Mike Carey (1) (1959–)

I finished "The Girl With All The Gifts" today, with that mixture of regret and deep satisfaction that only comes from reading a book that is so masterfully crafted that you don't notice how it works because you're too tied up in the emotions, the action, your deepening understanding of the people and their situation, the shock of the amoral inevitability of the scientific reality and the strong, REALLY strong need to know what happens next.

I'm not going to tell you what happens. I hate show more reviews with spoilers.

I'm just going to tell you how it made me feel.

I fell in love with the enigmatic Melanie, long before I knew who she was; in fact from the moment that she told me that she, with her very pale skin, shouldn't be called Melanie, because it means dark, and wants to be called Pandora because it means the girl with all the gifts and because the real Pandora was hard-wired to follow her curiosity wherever it took her, regardless of the consequences. I'm a man who own three etymological dictionaries. How can I not love a ten year-old girl who is fascinated with the origins of words?

As I started, slowly and stupidly but with great pleasure, (which is why there are no spoilers here) to understand Melanie and her situation, these words came back to me. She is Pandora, the girl with all the gifts: extraordinary, life-affirming, joyous gifts. She is also Melanie, filled with a darkness that belies her pale skin and which can never leave her.

This book is like that. Words have a meaning when you read them, then another meaning when you find out what happens next, and another meaning when you finish the book. That, by itself, is worthy of applause in any novel.

The early part of the book, when the larger context is obscured, and I had no more knowledge of the world than Melanie has in her windowless bunker, is deeply compelling and more than a little horrifying. It is entirely plausible, which is what makes it so disturbing. I was focused on Melanie, fascinated by her, horrified by the adults around her, willing her to survive their plans for her.

The surprising thing was that, when the context changes and the wider world is explored, the book gets better. Carey doesn't indulge in cardboard-cutout evil baddies. The evil in his book is inherently human, committed by people who are doing what they must or even what they believe they should. I enjoyed the fact that the focus didn't stay entirely on Melanie. I got to see the world through the eyes of each of the four main characters who surround her and the view from each of them was fascinating.

The pace of the book is perfect: keeping me on edge while giving me time to think through and speculate about the ideas and letting me get to know the characters better - making my experience mirror that of the people in the story.

"The Girl With All The Gifts" is packed with action and violence and gruesome, hard-to-forget details of cruelty and pain both sophisticated and barbaric. It has all the ingredients of an action-blockbuster but uses them as seasoning rather than the main meal. The meat of the book lies in the reactions of the adults to Melanie and, eventually, in Melanie's reaction to them. That takes this book from a blockbuster to something far more interesting.

The science is beautifully done. No dumbing-down but no worshiping at the altar of Popperian method either. Science is not a prop here - like a sonic screwdriver - infinitely useful and totally unexplained. In this book, science is literally knowledge of the truth. As such, it is completely indifferent to our hopes and our nightmares. It made me think that perhaps Truth was what the insatiably curious Pandora of the myth let out of the box. Which was why there was such a need for hope to be released into the world. It also made me recognize that I can only take so much truth. I KNOW that all of human history is a blip on the life of the planet but I can't/won't integrate that truth into my daily life - it does too much to take away meaning from my actions. This book shows how hard we work at denying the truth and how difficult it is to shape our lives around the truths we've learned.

The strongest impression that "The Girl With All The Gifts" left on me was that we are not defined by our birth or our knowledge or even our darkest actions, but by how we love. If Truth is the evil that Pandora released into the world, then Love is what keeps our hope alive. show less

Melanie is a little girl who lives in a cell under heavily armed guard, who goes to lessons five days a week with other children, all strapped down tight in wheelchairs. The world outside is full of mindless things called hungries, human survivors live in a walled town, and Melanie and her friends may be the salvation of the world. Or not.

Sometimes you work out what's going to happen, and you know it's not gonna be pretty and if you're in a weakened disposition like me - laid up with a show more sprained ankle in the heat and humidity of Summer - you have to fight against the sense of dread you feel as you get closer and closer to being right. Honestly, I wouldn't have made the effort only it's just so damn well written. Melanie's voice of innocent but highly intelligent youth seeing the world with new eyes is brilliantly conveyed, but so are the other characters, particularly no-nonsense Sergeant Parks. The pacing is flatout but never seems rushed, the plotting excellent, the ideas scary, the suspense high. It says something that a high-end zombie novel can be marketed now as a mainstream thriller. I expect it helps that this one has real emotional resonance.

So the voice and the style and pace and the heart of the book won out over the dread, and I devoured the book with the ravenous fungal speed of a hungry. But I was not wrong. show less

I'm mostly burned out on the whole zombie thing (I blame Covid and Walking Dead memes), but this one is fantastic. The writing is intelligent, there's enough action and tension to keep things moving and taut, and the characters are relatable and have real personalities. Although the plot largely adheres to genre guidelines, there are enough unique twists to keep it feeling original, and the ending is just…wow!

I for one welcome our new fungal overlords.

Content warning for this book: descriptions of dismembered kids, people and at least one cat being eaten while still alive, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting.

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell for the two men who will come to take her to class - one to aim a gun at her and one to tighten her restraints. It's the only life Melanie and her classmates have ever known. Their teachers change regularly, and some are better than others - Melanie most looks forward to Miss Justineau, show more because her classes are always interesting and wonderful. She reads the children stories and teaches them Greek mythology.

One day, however, Melanie's entire world changes, and suddenly she, Miss Justineau, Dr. Caldwell, Sergeant Parks, and Private Gallagher are out in the wider world, fighting for their lives and trying to make it to safety. Miss Justineau wants to keep Melanie safe, while Dr. Caldwell has other plans. Gradually, Melanie learns more about herself and the world she lives in.

I wasn't expecting to finish this is a weekend, but once I started reading it was hard to stop. I wanted to know how things worked out for Melanie and Miss Justineau. Eventually, Parks and Gallagher grew on me as well. Dr. Caldwell, not so much.

I don't know that what Melanie is is necessarily a spoiler, although I treated it like one in my description. Still, Melanie's average week was laid out first thing, and it included the detail that she and the other children were only fed one meal a week, a bowl of grubs, and seemed to be doing fine, considering. That was clearly not normal. And since this is a zombie book (called "hungries" here), it wasn't hard to figure out what Melanie and the other kids probably were. The bigger question, which Dr. Caldwell was trying to answer, was why Melanie and her classmates were so different from average zombies, which tended not to move or do anything unless they'd zeroed in on a potential meal.

The book alternated between multiple POVs - Melanie, Miss Justineau, Parks, Gallagher, and Dr. Caldwell all got some time, although Melanie, Parks, and Miss Justineau's POVs were most frequent. Melanie basically worshiped Miss Justineau. Not surprising, considering she was the only adult who treated her properly like a child and showed her any affection. Miss Justineau, purely through Melanie's eyes, would have been perfect, so the sections from Miss Justineau's POV added a bit more to her character and made her reaction at the end more believable. She cared for Melanie because she saw her as a child rather than as a monster, but the care she gave Melanie and the other children was also a form of atonement.

This was an addictive read with a gut punch of an ending. At the same time, I don't feel all that compelled to seek out the other works Carey set in the same world. This book was enough all on its own.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less