The Girl with All the Gifts (2014)

The Girl with All the Gifts (2014)

Author: M.R. Carey  |  Page Count: 460

'Sometimes he cries, and says he's sorry – not to the children, but to someone else who isn't really there, and whose name keeps changing.'

I stumbled upon TGwAtG in the autumn of 2014, before the promotion surrounding the movie adaptation made me more aware of what it was actually about. The only thing I knew regarding the novel prior to picking it up was that the author, M.R. Carey, was a pen name of Mike Carey. Because I'm a huge fan of Carey's work in comics, I bought it. I didn't even read the blurb on the back cover, not that it would've helped much anyhow.

Furthermore, if I'd known at the time of my stumbling what genre the novel was a part of, then I'd maybe have placed it quietly back on the shelf and continued toward the music section of the store, which was my original destination before deciding to check out the book aisle. But if I'd did that then I'd have missed out on a novel with solid worldbuilding and some interesting characters that had more to say than it seemed at first.

The post-apocalyptic setting isn't very original and many of the events that occur within it will be recognisable to fans of that kind of literature and/or cinema, but woven within the familiar encounters are some thoroughly engaging stand-off and bonding moments.

The narrative voice is present tense, split between that of a young girl named Melanie and a small number of very different adults. Melanie's education is limited, for reasons I won't divulge, but she's intelligent with well-developed cognitive abilities, so her responses and judgements aren't typically childish. Additionally, there's both a sympathetic, fragile tenderness and a contrasting savage darkness lingering at the edge of each of them. What that means for the reader is that even mundane events take on a special kind of observational critique.

In many ways it's a road movie (okay, road book) in which the road is fraught with danger and overrun with visible reminders of why each character is wired the way they are. It forces us to question if they would be much different if the circumstances weren't so grave. Also, for a child, trust and love are connected, two halves of the same treasure, is that something we outgrow as adults or does it just become greyer, more complex? Those questions and more linger after each encounter and are the meat of what kept me page-turning into the small hours.

I don't feel it's as gripping a tale as a lot of critics claim it to be, but nor is it something that I regret reading. I kept it on my shelf and I'll probably even check out Carey's subsequent novel that's set in the same world, The Boy on the Bridge (2017), when it's published in PB.