The Girl With All the Gifts
By M. R. Carey
(science fiction/416 pages, 2014)
The Girl With All the Gifts is set in a dystopian future in which most of humanity has been wiped out by a mysterious fungal infection, and is now populated by flesh-eating zombies. However, this is not your typical “zombie” story with humans trying to escape from the walking dead. The Girl With All the Gifts has a complex plot and well-developed characters.
Ten-year-old Melanie has been infected by the fungus. But instead of taking over her brain, as it has in other humans, Melanie remains a friendly, bright, and curious girl. She goes to “school” with other children like herself, she reads books and wants to learn, and she loves her teacher, Miss Justineau. Melanie seems to be a normal human child, right up to the moment she smells human blood…then she becomes a monster!
Because Melanie and the other children seem to have some immunity to the fungus, they have been brought to an underground laboratory to be studied by Dr. Caldwell, who hopes to find a cure for the fungal infection. Cold-hearted Dr. Caldwell does not see Melanie and the other children as human beings; they are only test subjects to be opened up and dissected in order to save what is left of humanity.
Miss Justineau knows that the children are infected with the fungus, which causes them to have a ravenous desire for human flesh. But she also sees their human qualities, and cannot help but to treat them all, and especially Melanie, with kindness. This often brings her at odds with Dr. Caldwell and Sargent, a hardened soldier charged with subduing and transporting the children to “school” and then keeping them safely locked away in their cells.
Poor Melanie is so lonely. She wonders why she and the other children are never allowed to interact with one another and why the adults, with the exception of Miss Justineau, ignore her and the other children. Melanie quietly listens and eventually learns about the “hungries” that are in the world outside of “school.” She’s happy to be locked safely away from the madness until the day the lab is invaded and destroyed by the “hungries.” Then, Melanie, Miss Justineau, and Sargent must escape and survive in the outside world.
While The Girl With All the Gifts is not a brand new book (2014), it seems rather timely during this COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent self-quarantine of people throughout the world. I would recommend the novel to anyone who likes the dystopian, sci-fi, or horror genres. It was well-written and had a different take on a popular subject in fiction.
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Meg Roby
