The Girl with All the Gifts

The Girl with All the Gifts
M. R. Carey, 2014

Premise: Melanie goes to class with a group of other kids. She likes their teachers, one in particular. She learns a lot in class, but she doesn't learn why she and her classmates live in cells on the base, or why no one is allowed to touch them, or why they only eat once a week...

This book suffered a little for me from expectations that were one hundred percent not the book's fault. I had heard a lot of hype about this book, but on reflection, I only knew two things about it - it's about a little girl who is a zombie, but she doesn't know it, and it was really popular.

I extrapolated from there that it would be a psychological book, full of unreliable narration, twists, and theories. I thought it would be entirely or mostly from her perspective, that the adults around the character might not know what was going on, that there would be a slow-burn reveal, and maybe she was the beginning of an outbreak.

It's not that book. Instead, it's a perfectly fine thriller with a decent theme.

It takes place some time after a zombie outbreak, and although the children in the compound are a mystery of sorts, everyone but the kids themselves knows that they are zombies. You read plenty of the perspective of the teacher, the scientist, the military leader and his men.

I liked it well enough, it was well written and clipped along at a good pace. The mythological parallel is a little forced at times, but works overall. However, by the time I got to the end, I thought that it might be a better movie than it was a book. The emphasis on action set pieces and occasional awkward expository dialogue meant that it felt like a movie pitch first and a novel second.

And it turned out that not only is it a movie, but the screenplay was being written concurrently with the novel! (I haven't tracked the movie down.) So, I guess, that's good.

3 Stars - A Good Book