Book Review: The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey

The Girl With All The Gifts is a horror novel from British author M. R. Carey, blending elements of post-apocalyptic fiction, science fiction and psychological horror.

Carey, also known as Mike Carey, is an established writer with a background in comics, including work on Lucifer and X-Men, as well as novels such as Fellside and The Book of Koli. The Girl With All The Gifts was also adapted into a 2016 film, with Carey himself writing the screenplay. You can read our review of the movie, here.

The focus here is the book though where The Girl With All the Gifts presents a bleak vision of a world devastated by a fungal infection, with humanity struggling to survive.

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks 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 is a very special girl.

The Girl With All The Gifts centres around Melanie, a young girl living in a military facility alongside a group of other children. Every morning, they are strapped into wheelchairs and taken to their classroom, where they receive lessons from their favourite teacher, Helen Justineau. Melanie is exceptionally intelligent, curious about the world and particularly fond of Helen. Obsessively fond really. Cleverly the book lets us wonder on why the children are held in such a facility for a time. We learn that the world outside has been through an apocalyptic event and that these children are in some way connected to that.

As we read on, through the restraints the children are kept in, the nervousness of the military guard around them and the children’s own actions, we see there is something very different about Melanie and the other children. We soon learn that they are infected with a fungal disease responsible for turning much of humanity into flesh-eating creatures known as hungries. Most of humanity infected by the disease appear to be mindless aggressors with a single goal of to feed on humanity but, despite their infection, these children retain their intelligence and ability to think, talk and learn. This makes them a fascinating subject for the scientists studying them within the facility they are held in, but also a potential threat to everyone around them.

The facility is very heavily guarded, with the children kept under strict control and treated more like dangerous specimens than human beings. The science side of things is headed up by a Dr Caroline Caldwell. She is determined to find a cure for the infection, believing that studying the children may hold the key to saving humanity. However, her approach is considerably more clinical, cold and detached than that of Helen, who sees the children as individuals rather than simply scientific opportunities. Melanie herself is particularly special, with an intelligence and awareness that make her stand out even among the other children.

When the facility is attacked and overrun by other factions, Melanie, who was on the verge of being cut open for studies is rescued from her fate by Helen and finds herself escaping alongside Helen, Caldwell and a small group of soldiers led by Sergeant Parks. Forced out into a world devastated by the infection, the group must navigate a landscape filled with danger, where the hungries are only one of the threats they face. As they struggle to survive and make their way towards what remains of human civilisation, tensions grow between the members of the group, particularly when it comes to Melanie and what she represents. Sergeant Parks sees her as a threat, Helen sees her as a child and Caldwell just wants to get to cutting and studying.

Melanie herself though, she just doesn’t know what she is and while the group are trying to figure her out, she is very much trying to come to terms with her own self too.

With humanity seemingly on the brink of extinction, the journey becomes about much more than simply survival. As the group begins to learn more about the infection and Melanie’s place in the world, difficult questions emerge about what it means to be human, whether survival should come at any cost, and what the future of humanity should look like.

I very much enjoyed The Girl With All The Gifts. It’s a different take on post-apocalyptic fiction and zombie horror, with very good pacing and strong character development. I like how the story focuses on a relatively small group of characters, allowing them to feel properly fleshed out rather than getting lost in a cast of hundreds. The story itself asks some very big questions about humanity, existence and morality, and I found myself considering many of the same questions as I read. In a way, Caldwell, Parks and Justineau represent different sides of the argument, and I found myself wondering which one best represented my own views.

I had empathy for all of them, understanding their motivations and the decisions they make, even when I didn’t necessarily agree with all of them. I really admired how Carey brought these characters to life in my mind, making them feel believable and giving them genuine depth. The same applies to the world around them, which feels bleak, dangerous and increasingly unsettling as the story progresses. The standard hungries are particularly interesting, with their movements and relentless drive making them equally fascinating and terrifying. However, nothing quite compares to the pack of wild children encountered in London as the group struggles to survive. That particular element of the story is disturbing and adds another layer of horror to an already unsettling world.

This is a top-quality story that is already well regarded, and having now read it myself, I can absolutely understand why. It’s an engaging, thought-provoking and genuinely different take on the zombie horror genre, with plenty more going on beneath the surface than simply surviving the apocalypse. If you haven’t read The Girl With All The Gifts, I would highly recommend it.

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