The Girl With All The Gifts - M.R. Carey

[sholio]

Yeah so my confession is that I've put off reading this book for ages because I didn't think I'd like it, I saw someone on my DW reading list posting about hating it, and figured I'd hate-read it so we could hate it together!

.... instead I really liked it; oops. 💀 Stayed up 'til much too late reading it last night, finished it today, and now I'm planning to make Orion watch the movie with me.

This is a book with a Surprise Premise Twist, but it's extremely obvious from the first few chapters what the twist is (actually this is a major part of why I thought I'd hate it, because I had osmosed that the book is mostly about the twist, and it actually isn't). I already knew it going in, but in case you don't want to know, here's what you learn in the first chapter or two: this book is (at least initially) from the viewpoint of a little girl, Melanie. She and the other students at her school are locked up in cells at night, and put in restraints before being wheeled into classrooms where they are taught regular classroom-type lessons and then put back in their cells. They don't have books or toys. Melanie has no memories of anything before this place.

The twist, which I think really isn't a surprise even if you haven't already osmosed it from somewhere: This is actually a post-apocalyptic secret military facility after the world has been overrun by zombies. Melanie and the other kids in the school are zombies who, for reasons unknown, did not fully zombify and retain human intelligence (while still being prone to fits of hunger when they smell regular humans up close), so they're being studied, and occasionally vivisected, to try to find a cure for the rest of the plague victims.

So I thought most of the book was teasing the twist, but it's not, actually! In fact, just a few chapters in, it takes a sharp turn and becomes extremely relevant to my interests.


The facility is attacked and overrun by zombies, and a small group of survivors, including Melanie, must try to make it to safety overland through zombie-infested wilderness.

This book does something that I don't think I've run across before in Evil Science Lab media. Melanie is definitely an evil science lab refugee; the lab's psychopathic head doctor is in the process of strapping her down to cut out her brain when the zombie hordes break through. However, the doctor who was trying to vivisect her is one of the people who escape, along with Melanie's favorite teacher (the one person at the facility who treats her as a person, at least initially), and two of the military personnel who have been keeping her prisoner and bullying her. Basically, I think this is the first time I've run across an escape-from-evil-lab scenario in which the escapees included both the experimental victim(s) and their tormenters having to survive together, and it creates a really interesting situation with lots of tasty ethical conflicts, especially since the book is (imho) pretty fair to all the characters.

Obviously Melanie doesn't deserve to be vivisected and we get into the ethics of that, but - they're literal apocalypse survivors who are mostly just trying to survive, and she's an actual zombie, she *does* actually eat people and is overcome with uncontrollable hunger when people get too close to her, and their initial precautions against her (which include putting a muzzle on her and tying her hands) are a) horrifying but b) actually justifiable under the circumstances, and Melanie agrees with them.

What follows is a lot of survival stuff and trauma bonding, while Melanie learns more about what she really is, and the rest of the survivors remain divided over how much they can trust her. The book does a really great job, imho, with tight POV; we rotate between the various survivors, and they all feel true to their somewhat narrow perception of their slice of the survival situation.

The ending somehow manages to feel hopeful while also being bleak even by the standards of zombie media:

Ending spoilers.

There is no safety, no cure, and possibly no other survivors besides the protagonists. It turns out that what makes Melanie and the other not-fully-zombified kids so different from the other zombies is that they were infected in utero and grew up with the plague fungus, giving them the ability to coexist with it (but it's also inextricably entwined with their nervous system). In the end, after the deaths of most of her companions, Melanie deliberately releases an apocalyptic rain of spores on the planet to hurry along the end of humanity and the rise of the human-fungus hybrids who will come after them. That being said, the final interactions between the characters are genuinely really sweet and mutually protective (PARKS ;__;) and in the end, Melanie's favorite teacher (Miss Justineau) survives and Melanie sets out with her to teach the new generation of human-spore hybrids all the lost skills of the vanished world, as Miss Justineau taught her back at the start of it all.

Irrelevant medical gripe, not zombie-related:

Cut for your easy avoidance

One of the characters dies of sepsis from infected wounds, and like every media that I have encountered dealing with sepsis since I actually had sepsis, this book is completely wrong about it. I think it's fascinating actually, because I also had written it once or twice beforehand and was wrong in the exact same ways. Not that it can't have a variety of courses and I'm sure there are definitely different ways it can present, but I think it's one of those things, like people getting hit in the head and knocked out, where many authors write it the way they do because everyone else writes it that way. This book is pretty typical: the injured character slowly develops red stripes on her injured limbs and a growing fever and gets weaker, but remains lucid and fully able to do (plot) things until she quietly passes away. As opposed to my experience, which was going in a matter of hours from perfectly fine with zero symptoms to incapacitated with nausea, weakness, skyrocketing heartbeat, sudden 103-4 degree fever, excruciating headache, and a rapidly developing inability to think clearly. Ultimately, sepsis is similar to end-stage covid; it's mass organ failure, including the heart, lungs, brain, and blood clotting factors failing to work correctly, and people with end-stage sepsis essentially have their blood pressure plummet and die of shock and inability to breathe as all their organs stop working. I think one reason why I didn't realize what was wrong with me until being diagnosed is because you never really see it depicted that way in the media. Even if you allow for a slower onset of symptoms, a person dying of sepsis won't be feverish, they'll be cold and blue and gasping for air while their organs shut down. Thus ends my complaint due to having read way too much about the actual symptoms and progression of the disease during my recovery. 😂

Comments

[sovay]

Stayed up 'til much too late reading it last night, finished it today, and now I'm planning to make Orion watch the movie with me.

I will be very curious to hear about the movie! I read the novel because I had enjoyed the original short story ("Iphigenia in Aulis") which shares the same premise and character relations and moves in completely different directions, as signaled by the change in key myth; I wasn't sure if I would enjoy the novel for that reason, but they turned out to be different enough that I really did.

(PARKS ;__;)

+1.

[edit] I see he's played in the film by Paddy Considine: nice.

[sholio]

I can very easily see this as a short story (in fact I think the short story version of the first 1/4 or so of the novel would be what I had erroneously imagined the entire book to be; it's very much a short story premise and not a novel premise). But it also makes the transition to a novel very well, which has not always been my experience.

I don't know Paddy Considine at all, but I looked him up and I am very much looking forward to seeing him as Parks. Incidentally, I went looking on AO3 after I finished the book and found a sort-of fix-it for that death, which I enjoyed as an alternate book ending that keeps the rest except for that one thing.

[sovay]

But it also makes the transition to a novel very well, which has not always been my experience.

Agreed! In both cases, actually. And I like the way the world of the novel complicates from the short story and I really love the ending, which does feel like an inevitable balance of grief and hope. Fingers crossed the film can pull it off. I remember it got some very good reviews at the time.

I don't know Paddy Considine at all, but I looked him up and I am very much looking forward to seeing him as Parks.

I noticed him abruptly with The World's End (2013) and then he was lovely in Pride (2014) and after that I have kept an eye out for him, not really to the point of following him, but I did watch The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: The Murder at Road Hill House (2011) for him and keep meaning to watch the rest of the films in the series, which did the amazing thing of flanging off into complete invention after starting with a historical case. He also gives consistently interesting interviews. Anyway, the real point of this paragraph is that I am now seriously considering watching the film.

Incidentally, I went looking on AO3 after I finished the book and found a sort-of fix-it for that death, which I enjoyed as an alternate book ending that keeps the rest except for that one thing.

Thank you!

[black_bentley]

I read this YEARS ago (possibly when the paperback first came out), and remember enjoying it much more than I expected to, because it's not my usual genre at all. I haven't read it since, and I'm now wondering if I should dig it back out...

[sholio]

I had a lot of fun! Much more than I expected. I do like horror, but I don't usually like body horror and zombie horror, which this obviously has wall to wall.

[mific]

Oh yeah, I loved it, and can also recommend the sequel, The Boy on the Bridge.

[sholio]

I think I need some recovery time before reading anything else set in this world, but I'm definitely curious about it!

[sushiflop]

LMAO PEOPLE REALLY LIKE THIS BOOK and it's my curse because of how much I hate it, particularly how Caldwell is ultimately handled/portrayed. I am just sick and tired of books that treat scientists and the practice of science as like, ruthless and villainous and cold and evil, and I wound up feeling like that kinda was how Caldwell was written once all was said and done, and... it bothered me. TBH I resent that her brain vivisections of individual victims feel like they were given much more moral weight than Melanie's effective genocide of whatever remained of humanity.

I'm glad you liked it though!! Preferable to like books than not like them...

[michelel72]

Fist-bump of agreement. Melanie's decision bothered me, and I think you're right to call out the seeming difference in moral judgment. (Then again, I was already soured by a particular graphic animal death in the book that the movie "helpfully" made sure to include as well; and I still am not clear how the hybrid infants are supposed to have survived infancy anyway.)

[sushiflop]

Yeah. Like, I guess you could call what Melanie did an euthanasia shot on a species that was inevitably going to die anyway, but I absolutely loathe it! Were there living humans out there in the world, surely some of them were good people who deserved to live their lives as long as they wanted and could, and the fact that her kill shot sort of gets brushed aside by the narrative... well, I hate it! Let's leave it at that.

It's natural as readers to bond with the characters we see on the page. We know they're not real, after all. So in this respect weighting Caldwell's decisions much more than Melanie's makes sense. But to the characters, the thousands, or millions, or trillions of unknown people they share their stories with probably should matter. When characters who should care brush things like that aside, it's at very least irritating, in my opinion...

[sholio]

Ha, I was wondering what the exact issue was, and to be honest, I don't actually disagree on most of this? It just didn't bother me on a book-ruining level. Actually my biggest issue with the first few chapters was basically EXACTLY this (the moral judgment on Caldwell et al given that Melanie & co. are literal, actual flesh-eating zombies who are animated by a fungus), although I got into the book later and didn't mind it, but I can totally see having this reaction to it!

[sushiflop]

Well, you know, mad scientist but benign is one of my favorite tropes these days, lol. And we could've had that with Caldwell, or at least something like it, and instead we went with the boring old "pure evil actually" take and I was and remain just so disgusted by that! I would even have been happier if she and Melanie had bonded but Caldwell had regretfully made the same final choice once all was said and done. She deserved better as a character u_u

not to mention, there's just something about the benign, mother-figure woman being the one who is treated well by the narrative, who lives in the end, versus the cold career woman who is totally hubristic in thinking she could change things and wishing to do so...

Anyway, most people love this book, and there's certainly something to it! It was close to being something I could love. Just... the last review I read of it, I liked the reviewer overall but he absolutely relished Caldwell's death and thought she deserved everything she got at the end of things and it made me mad all over again.

[chelseagirl]

I read this ages ago and remember quite liking it as well. I'd say maybe time for a reread if I didn't have such a daunting number of unread books hanging about.

[sholio]

So many books, so little time ...

[rose_griffes]

I thought TGWATG was well-written, but my timing for reading it was terrible. April 2020. Oops. Not the best moment for pandemic-related fiction.

Dying of sepsis: huh, I hadn't thought about it. But pulling in what I've seen: the patient was going into a rapid downward spiral and then in a medically-induced coma for, er, a week or so. (Fortunately he made a good recovery.)

[sholio]

Oh nooooooo, that is definitely not the best timing for reading this book! TBH, I'm only just now getting to where I can start reading that kind of thing again.

[lunabee34]

I really liked this book, too.

I didn't realize there's a movie!

[sholio]

It looks like the movie was written by the same author as the book and tracks pretty closely with it! I'll probably be watching it as soon as my husband and I are both in the mood.

[lunabee34]

That bodes well for the movie!

[umadoshi]

Stayed up 'til much too late reading it last night, finished it today, and now I'm planning to make Orion watch the movie with me.

I'll be interested to hear what you think! I read the novel quite a few years before I saw the movie, and just plain didn't remember the novel that well by that point, and quite enjoyed the movie. The friend I saw it with remembered the novel very well and was not a fan of the movie as an adaptation, at least.

At this point, my main memory is of being incredibly impressed by Melanie's actor.

[sholio]

I'm definitely interested to watch the movie! It seems like a very challenging role for a child actor, for sure.

[vass]

That sounds interesting. Do they touch directly on the disability education parallels they're drawing at all?

[sholio]

I don't recall that it was explicitly dealt with, but I'm also not really the person to ask! I would say the book treats as more of a metaphor for how we treat out-group people in general, imho.

[rheanna]

I read this years and years ago - possibly when it came out in paperback - and I did enjoy it a lot, although it skews slightly too dark for me now, so I doubt I'll ever re-read it (or watch the movie). I did intend to read some other books by the same author and never got round to it.

The bit that stuck with me is the horror of how the ending for Melanie's teacher - I think from memory she's basically the only old-style human left alive anywhere and she's going to spend the rest of whatever life remains to her living in the sealed environment of the rover and not able to go outside except in a hazmat suit? I think I remember reading her fate as a kind of penance on behalf of 'old' humanity who had messed up the world, and she's going to make some small kind of amends by making sure the hybrid kids get some kind of education in this brief window where it's possible to pass knowledge from the previous type of humans to the new type. So that really stayed with me.

There's also a great moment in one of the early chapters where Melanie calls out one of her other teachers on some factual point he's been inconsistent about, I think it's the population of Birmingham or something, and the poor guy just breaks and starts ranting about how it doesn't matter because it's all gone anyway.

[sholio]

Yeah, I think tbh there's a lot of what TV Tropes calls fridge horror with this book, the sort of thing where the awfulness doesn't quite strike you at first but the more you think about it, the more it's like "oh my GOD." And her teacher's situation is very much like that. I think it reads as hopeful in the book but then you get to thinking about the life she's going to have, and how precarious and confined it's going to be, and .... ouch. (She does explicitly see it as penance in the book. I'm not entirely sure I agree, but I can see why she thinks that.)

[frith_in_thorns]

Love the book and the movie, I think it's a really good adaptation - it doesn't go as deep as the book into detail, but a lot of the points are much starker when visual so I think it balances out. Genuinely one of my favourites. (I made a fanvid! It's on AO3! It's a straight run through the movie so don't watch until you've seen it.)

[sholio]

Hi there! :D I'm delighted you have a video for it - I will look forward to watching it when I watch the movie! (Which may not happen for a while as Orion & I are both pretty busy right now - but WHEE.)