The Girl With All the Gifts

For me, this was one of those rare books, that immediately enthrall you and make you want to never stop reading - sleep be damned and all that.

Reading through the free preview of the book, I fell in love with the Melanie character right away. The mix of deep love, intelligence and innocence she shows at the beginning of the book, might even have resulted in me getting a little teary-eyed. Must have gotten some dust in my eye or something *manly cough*... After that I bought it right away and read through it in 2 days.

The main plot is exciting and suspenseful and definitely contributed to the reading frenzy I experienced, but what truly captured me was the themes it touched, and most of all the emotional journey of the main character. Underneath it all it's a beautiful tale about love, as well as about growing up and finding one's place in the world.

The narrative style, where each of the chapters is told from the perspective of one of five characters, makes for an interesting read, once you get used to the frequent switches and - if you're me - get over the fact that it's not exclusively about Melanie and her view of the world. Also, as to be expected from the author, the book is clever, full of references and some witty one-liners, worth quoting.

The next paragraph contains information that might be considered minor spoilers - feel free to skip it, if you are concerned.

I had one personal issue with the book and that was that the Dr. Caldwell character to me had too much of the "heartless scientist" stereotype in her. Not that she was badly written, not that I don't believe people like her exist, I just personally wish we would have gotten a more nuanced version of her, see her wrestle with the things she does and feels need to be done, a little bit more. Scientists in storytelling don't often get a good rep, and - probably because I loved this book so much - I wish it would have given us a more approachable version of that character.

Despite what I just wrote in the above paragraph, I love this book. Not because I thought everything about it was perfect - but you don't fall in love with a book (or a movie, or another human being, or pretty much anything) by dissecting it and analyzing the quality of every individual piece and than adding it all up and judging it. You love it for what it is. And as a whole I enjoyed and I cherish The Girl With All the Gifts and the time I had with it tremendously. It was an amazing experience.

Disclosure: Many years ago Mike Carey once sent me 2 issues of the Inferno comic book series he wrote way back when, because he saw my post on a forum where I mentioned how much I liked what I had read from it, even though I was missing 2 of the books (including the ending). I also once drank tea at his house and he gave me a lift to the Bristol comic convention. He never asked for anything in return for any of this, which either simply makes him one of the nicest people on the planet, or means that I now owe him my immortal soul. Possibly both.


The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
My goodreads-rating: 5 of 5 stars