The Girl With All the Gifts, by M.R. Carey

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Since Mary Wollstonecraft examined medical ethics and the God complex in her tale of the Modern Prometheus, science fiction and horror have worked toward a calling higher than simply scaring the pants off readers. M.R. (a.k.a., Mike) Carey’s new book about a post-epidemic Britain (for spoilers’ sake, I’m leaving out details) accomplishes this task admirably, looking looking at topics such as research ethics, how our experiences impact our behavior, and, at the heart of the story, what makes us human. By telling the story from the viewpoints of multiple characters, we see each person’s perspective on the same events. Most of the time, one cannot classify any one individual as wholly good, wholly evil, wholly dumb, etc. Everyone has their initial impressions turned on their heads in some way, whether we’re talking about a scientist who learns her research is headed in the wrong direction or a teacher who realizes there’s more to the authority figure she despises. This novel is a thinking person’s horror, and the last 15 pages or so themselves are worth the price of admission. The Girl shook me in new and not-altogether-good ways (when I finished I had to look at puppy pictures for 10 minutes), but I loved it anyway.



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