The Girl With All The Gifts
The most original thriller you will read this year
-
-
4.4 • 232 Ratings
-
-
- £4.99
Publisher Description
'ORIGINAL, THRILLING AND POWERFUL' - Guardian
'HAUNTING, HEARTHBREAKING' - Vogue
The phenomenal word-of-mouth bestseller that is now a BAFTA Award-nominated movie
NOT EVERY GIFT IS A BLESSING
Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite. But they don't laugh.
Melanie is a very special girl.
Emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end, THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS is the most powerful and affecting thriller you will read this year.
'A great read that takes hold of you and doesn´t let go' - John Ajvide Lindqvist, author of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
*Return to the world of THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS in M. R. Carey's stunning new novel THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE - out now!*
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Marrying the dystopian chill of John Wyndham’s sci-fi classic The Chrysalids with the poignancy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s eerie Never Let Me Go, The Girl with All the Gifts is by turns deeply unsettling and achingly tender. Confined in an underground bunker, a precocious girl named Melanie is poked, prodded and restrained by caregivers keen to understand the virulent spore that’s overtaken the earth and turned its hosts into zombies. With understated, elegant prose and strikingly humane descriptions of Melanie’s relationships with the adults around her, M.R. Carey adds depth and heft to his zombie thriller.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Comics writer Carey (Lucifer) delivers an entertaining take on several well-worn zombie tropes. Years after the requisite zombie apocalypse (this time caused by a mutant strain of an ant-killing fungus, probably the book's most original touch), scientists in a remote outpost in England are working on a cure by experimenting on a group of zombified children who retain some of their original emotions and cognitive functions. Although Carey piles on the clich s (beyond the apocalypse and the recently trendy intelligent zombies, there are rogue survivalists straight out of The Walking Dead, scientists willing to cross ethical lines, and the ever-silly notion that people would use any term other than "zombies" to refer to the undead), he builds well-constructed characters particularly Melanie, one of the zombified children, who comes across as cognitively and emotionally different from the other characters, without feeling like an offensive parody of a person with Asperger's. The requisite action sequences are also well constructed, and the book will appeal to fans of zombie fiction.
Customer Reviews
Great Zombie story… with a nice twist!
Well written, set the characters out early & animated them through out the story. A different spin on the usual Zombie narrative…. and it worked very well.
The end of days, and re-birth
Unlike any other novel, I’ve ever read, this post-apocalyptic journey of awakening for the eponymous girl most closely resembles a zombie tale.
The characters are beautifully drawn their motivations are clear and, indeed, the reader feels understanding and empathy for even the most horrible characters
Although I more or less guessed the outcome several chapters out, it didn’t lessen the impact of how and why we got there.
Melody is going on a little early to school
It was nice