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A review by fsethompson
The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
5.0
Hot damn was this a good book. It had been on my list for over a year and when I finally got around to reading it I just tore through it in a couple of days - I just could not put it down. This is really one of those books that keeps you guessing the whole way through and it really makes you excited to know what happens next. You care about the characters but you're also interested to see just how far they will go to achieve their goals, and speaking of which, they all have distinct motivations that - while some are easier to sympathise with than others - are all very much rooted in genuine human emotions. Like I didn't like Dr Caldwell as a person but my goodness did I understand where she was coming from on every level, and I was always so interested to see what she was going to do next.
The fact that we got to see inside the psyche of each of the central characters was a really brilliant element of the book because not only does it keep the plot moving (personally I could have stayed in Melanie's head forever but it would have been pretty stagnant considering how much happens outside her knowledge and how interested you become in everyone's motivations and plans) but it also emphasises the distinct reactions and beliefs each of them holds about the world around them. It really makes the book feel genuinely human, which is definitely its greatest strength.
The one thing I had even the slightest problem with was the fact that we didn't get to learn too much about how the previous world collapsed. They mention different stages of crisis, from the initial breakout of the fungus 30 years prior to the 'Breakdown' which I presume was when most of humanity and its last hopes went down the toilet but aside from mentioning how early reactions included chem-bombing cities, we never get to know much about the degradation of humanity to its current state. So if like me you really love the kind of processes that go into a world and society losing shape, you're not going to find that here. But you will find an excellent apocalypse story, even if it is in its later stages.
I love the ending, and honestly there's not much I can say even with spoiler tags because it's just so... big. This is a small book and it feels intimate with this small sphere of action and characters who you get to know intimately well and it matches Melanie's subconscious because of how little she knows about the world and herself but the ending. Damn. The narrative implications are monumental and the philosophy behind it really pulls at your heart and just.
Just read this book. It's wonderful.
The fact that we got to see inside the psyche of each of the central characters was a really brilliant element of the book because not only does it keep the plot moving (personally I could have stayed in Melanie's head forever but it would have been pretty stagnant considering how much happens outside her knowledge and how interested you become in everyone's motivations and plans) but it also emphasises the distinct reactions and beliefs each of them holds about the world around them. It really makes the book feel genuinely human, which is definitely its greatest strength.
The one thing I had even the slightest problem with was the fact that we didn't get to learn too much about how the previous world collapsed.
I love the ending, and honestly there's not much I can say even with spoiler tags because it's just so... big. This is a small book and it feels intimate with this small sphere of action and characters who you get to know intimately well and it matches Melanie's subconscious because of how little she knows about the world and herself but the ending. Damn. The narrative implications are monumental and the philosophy behind it really pulls at your heart and just.
Just read this book. It's wonderful.