The Girl with All the Gifts

By: M. R. Carey

Narrated by: Finty Williams

Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's Summary

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award 2014

Not every gift is a blessing.

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her 'our little genius'.

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant 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 loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favourite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up.

Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

Emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end, The Girl with all the Gifts is the most powerful and affecting thriller you will listen to this year.

The phenomenal word-of-mouth best seller The Girl with all the Gifts is now a major film on widespread distribution starring Glenn Close, Gemma Arterton and Paddy Considine.

©2014 M. R. Carey (P)2014 Hachette Audio

Critic Reviews

"A great read that takes hold of you and doesn´t let go." (John Ajvide Lindqvist, author of Let The Right One In)
"Brilliant... Gripping right to the end." ( Sunday Times best-selling author Carole Matthews)

Wholly Unique

Would you consider the audio edition of The Girl with All the Gifts to be better than the print version?

I haven't read the print version, but I thoroughly enjoyed the audio. There were some fantastic quotables that I would have liked to underline or at least page back to, but otherwise I'm quite satisfied.

Have you listened to any of Finty Williams’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, but I enjoyed this performance.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Carey writes so touchingly about Melanie that my heart wants to break. I adore how she gets the reader closer and closer to her characters. The characters are also fallible, and sometimes downright unlikeable, but generally not stereotypically so. They seem human. Sometimes Dr Caldwell seemed a bit like the Mad Scientist stereotype, though...

"I won't hurt you. I just want to examine you."

Ten-year-old Melanie thinks she's a normal girl (maybe a little better at maths and myths than her classmates) who'll grow up to be a princess and to maybe rescue her beloved teacher Miss Justineau from monsters. To Miss Justineau, Melanie is a special child. To Sergeant Parks, she is a dangerous monster. To Private Gallagher, she is uncanny. To Dr. Caldwell, she is Test Subject Number 1.

That complexity is one of the virtues of M. R. Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts (2014), a zombie genre retelling of the Greek myth about Pandora (whose name, Melanie explains, means "the girl with all the gifts"). All five point of view characters are right and wrong about Melanie, and reading to find out if and how they'll learn they're wrong and right is a suspenseful pleasure--if pleasure is the right word for a story set in a near future twenty years after a parasitic fungus mutated so as to colonize human hosts, commandeering their nervous systems and consuming their brains to turn people into "hungries," virtually mindless predators driven to eat raw meat to provide protein to the fungus, resulting in "the Breakdown" of civilization and the probable eventual extinction of homo sapiens.

Narrated from Melanie's point of view, the first three of seventy-four chapters recall Never Let Me Go, for she is confined to a place with her life organized around classes, and her fellow pupils and she are destined for a special terminal purpose, which her favorite teacher, Miss Justineau, is finding increasingly difficult to deal with. Melanie and her classmates live in small individual cells on a kind of military base. Despite not being free to leave the cellblock, despite not even being able to leave her cell unless she's strapped head and foot to a wheel chair, Melanie has picked up various clues about her world from what her teachers and to Sergeant Parks, who's in charge of the kids' confinement, say. But she still doesn't quite know what she is.

After a band of "junkers," "survivalist assholes" who live by scavenging, pay the base a call, the novel kicks into high page-turning gear. Although Carey includes some typical zombie genre tropes (e.g., the old trapped in a house surrounded by zombies situation), he does most everything with a refreshing, unsparing, and convincing authenticity, while adding enough surprises and fresh takes on the typical tropes to make his book bracing. And because we care about his characters, it's all very suspenseful.

Yes, the strongest part of this novel is its convincing point of view characters, each with their own personal history shaping and driving them, often in conflict with others: Miss Justineau (psychologist brought in to study the children's emotional responses and cognitive processes), Dr. Caldwell (uber scientist out to save homo sapiens via vivisection), scar-faced Sergeant Parks (essential soldier aiming to do his job), Private Gallagher (hapless, gormless, sweet). And wonderful Melanie of course. She wishes her name were Pandora, because she has learnt that Pandora didn't only release harmful things into the world but also some good things and figures that Pandora shouldn't be blamed because Zeus made her with curiosity and set up the whole trap. She's like any kid sensually experiencing and building an overwhelming new world around herself--and she's something very different. She has great presence and poise, fears and bravery.

Carey works in plenty of allusions to Greek/Roman myths (like Acteon) and legends (like The Aeneid). And his similes/metaphors are apt, telling, vivid, fresh, sometimes humorous.
--"The laugh you'd make if you rubbed out a mistake in a sum and accidentally tore the paper."
--"Her first taste of blood and warm flesh gives her a rush of pleasure bigger than she is… the part of her that can think bends in the cataract of mindless pleasure and hunger, and she goes on eating, feeling like a torrent of waterfall poured in a cup."
--Hungries standing still in different stages of decomposition "look like they're posing for paintings."
--"a fine fractal froth" of spores.

It is not a horror fantasy novel so much as a science fiction suspense novel. The biology of the fungus is convincingly detailed, with plenty of scientific language and behavior. As with much of the best sf, it comments on how we live now: "It's like before the breakdown people used to spend their whole lives making cocoons for themselves out of furniture and ornaments and books and toys and pictures and any kind of shit they could find."

And the ending! It is perfect: surprising, inevitable, disturbing, and moving.

The audiobook is finely read by Flinty Williams. She is the kind of reader who doesn't try to perform vocal gymnastics to differentiate among different characters, but only slightly lowers or raises her voice for men or kids, etc., and just reads every word and sentence with pitch perfect pronunciation, pacing, and emphasis. And she has an appealing British accent, voice, and manner.

People who like the zombie genre's potential and are willing to sample its more intelligent and original examples, like Daryl Gregory's Raising Stony Mayhall (2011), should like this book. (Refreshingly, it doesn't appear to be the first in a series.)

**Note: Just because one of the main characters is ten years old, don't think that this is exactly a YA book: its attack on human pride may be disturbing, and many scenes are graphic.**

Fabulous!

I listen to a lot of audiobooks, in lots of different genres, and every now and then you come across one that is extra good. And I have to say 'The Girl with Al the Gifts' is really quite wonderful.
It's really well written, and the narration is perfect. I loved everything about it!

excellent

not a dull moment in the whole story, simply fantastic in every way! definitely recommend

Excellent, gripping story from start to end

Narrator was superb, as was the story. Made this genre accessible even for those who may not usually choose to read this kind of book. Riveting. I raced through it, but now wish there was more!

Strong start, ultimately disappointing finish

A good performance by the narrator and fairly well written - but the story fell flat in the end as a lot of the theory didn't stack up.
I dont know how to explain it without giving away the whole story - but the girl, who is the one with 'all the gifts' is a product of a particular event...and the whole crux of the story is completely undermined by the final scenes. So while you're meant to be shaken by the dramatic ending, to me it didn't add up at all. Meh.

A page turner (or audio binger?) indeed

This is one of the more original stories I've heard. it reveals itself slowly, with surprise, suspense and emotions on each step.
couldn't recommend it enough.

The best zombie story

I have been in love with this story since hearing the short story version of it (Iphigenia at Aulis, please listen to or read it as well for a slightly different but equally amazing story!)
The characterization, the premise, the dynamics - all beautifully crafted.
Finty Williams is a terrific narrator.

Holy crap!! The end was AMAZING!!

The end to thIs book took it from a 8/10 to a 10/10!!I highly recommend this book!!

Brilliant

The writer kept me on the very edge, sometimes too disturbed too listen, but too intrigued not too. Great story, very well read.

A stunning read

Any additional comments?

Having listened to hundreds of audiobooks, this is the first review that I've written … and I'm doing so only because my opinion is so at odds with the two-and-a-half stars that this book has been awarded so far.
I found this a thoroughly gripping and thought-provoking tale; a highly original take on, to be honest, a somewhat hackneyed genre. (I won't mention the genre, as the part of the joy is the gradual unfolding of the protagonist's identity.)
The characters are satisfyingly rounded and the plot both engaging and pacey. From the outset through to the final few minutes, I had no idea of the book's conclusion and, when it finally came, I was far from disappointed.
Mention must also go to Finty Williams for some beautiful characterisation and a warm and textured performance.
So, if I’m waxing so lyrical about this production, why has it been so poorly received elsewhere? Well, I have to admit that it's not the book I had anticipated; and this is due to the necessarily vague publisher’s description. (As I mentioned earlier, giving too much away at the beginning would leach the joy from the first section of the book). So, like me, perhaps other listeners didn’t end up with the book they’d anticipated but, unlike me, found themselves in too much of an unfamiliar setting to enjoy their surroundings.
So, without giving too much away, what you get in the box is, ostensibly, a somewhat bleak post-apocalyptic drama, laced with plenty of warmth to balance the grit and revolving around an intriguingly textured central character. I hope that you find the surprises as pleasing as I did.

worth it

I really struggle sometimes to find a book that hits the spot. Having been spoiled with Sanderson and Rothfuss, whose epic fantasies tick every box, it's regularly hard to find a viable alternative. This book was it. Not a true fantasy by my standards, rather it's of the apocalyptic variety.

Enough new stuff to keep me interested - and keep me thinking. Well written too. One of those books that will stay with me for many years, I'm sure.

It has a slight shock factor - probably hits different people at different stages. Well narrated.

Certainly worth a credit - even if not your normal genre.

Horrific but gripping performance

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Yes I was gripped.

Would you ever listen to anything by M. R. Carey again?

No, too much horror for my taste.

What about Finty Williams’s performance did you like?

She actually performed it rather than just reading it and her voice is easy to listen to with no strong accent.

Was The Girl with All the Gifts worth the listening time?

Yes

STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND DOWNLOAD THIS BOOK

If you could sum up The Girl with All the Gifts in three words, what would they be?

time to think

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Girl with All the Gifts?

My house has never been so clean, I made up jobs to carry on listening, The whole concept of what we could become

Any additional comments?

I have not stopped thinking about the play of characters since I finished this. I forgot time and place and lost myself in this book.

An interesting twist on a horror classic.

I loved everything about this book. The story was gripping from start to finish, the characterisation pulled me in from the beginning and Carey rapidly built a world I wanted to know more about. The genre was familiar but this was such a different take that it never felt clichéd, and the very British nature of the story also made it more haunting for me. And the ending - perfect.
I had never heard this narrator before but she captured the voices and the tone perfectly and really added to the novel.
I admit that I was sad that there was no new Felix Castor but if this is an example of what we can expect from Carey in the future then I'm very happy indeed.

Surprised !

If I had realised what this story was about I would NOT have chosen it....
It was only once I was into the story that I slowly started to realise that Melanie wasn't normal, nor was her environment. Something made me continue to listen and I became more and more engrossed!
I ended up listening avidly to the whole book and eagerly returning for more.
I really enjoyed it and, as I said at the begining, I would not have chosen it or anything of this ilk....very pleasantly surprised!

Totally gripping

Where does The Girl with All the Gifts rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Right up there, I couldn't switch it off, kept saying to myself, "just one more chapter" and always ended up listening to more than that, so it only lasted 2 days!

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Girl with All the Gifts?

The action in the lab while the characters are still at the base, and the central protagonist i.e. the first character we're introduced to and asked to view the story through her eyes, is in mortal peril, and I had no idea how she'd get out of it or where the story would go from there. Brilliant, fast-moving action which never dulls for a second. Never read anything by M.R. Carey (or whoever he is behind the pen-name) before, but definitely will seek his novels out from now on - witty, intelligent, compassionate.

What does Finty Williams bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

A really solid, professional narrator. Takes the story seriously, gives each of the characters equal weight and doesn't try to steer the listener towards seeing any one of them as more or less villainous or heroic than the others. Subtle and steady narration which was very easy to follow (even for the long scientific descriptions which I didn't totally understand but got the gist, and how they suited the rigid character of Dr. Caldwell). Seeing a book is narrated by Finty Williams gives me confidence in the quality.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

The title itself is already a great tagline in the way it alludes to Pandora, and the mystery behind Melanie.

Any additional comments?

Really well written, excellent descriptions, absorbing changes of narrative perspective between characters for almost every chapter. Shares similarities with Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, particularly at the beginning, as well as countless Zombie horror movies, and apocalyptic fiction. Really accessible even if you don't normally like the genre. Just a great read.

Not the story i expected but very good

Not my normal sort of read but this was a class act and I am so glad I followed the recommendation. My only complaint and it shows how picky I am, was the use of the word "Hungries" it just jagged a bit. The hard hitting story being told with the child view to the front makes the whole much more sinister and disturbing.
The end is to die for, loads of pun intended. I had not seen that coming.
Not sure if there could ever be a sequel or prequel. I can but hope.
Slight surprise was to find out the author was a man. I had assumed it was a female author all the way through. Now I need to find out who M R Carey really is.
Basically this a great read and I would recommend to anyone, provided they are OK with a bit of horror and gore.
Nice one M R

Couldn't stop listening

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, definitely. You immediately get drawn into the main characters and I finished the book in 24 hrs

Who was your favorite character and why?

Actually the teacher. I found her to be both likeable and naive.

What about Finty Williams’s performance did you like?

The pace of the narration was perfect as was the pitch. I was extremely content to listen for hours on end.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Yes. I cried at the end. Not giving anything away but it was a satisfactory ending.

Beginner Science Ficton

Being a big fan of the sci-fi genre, particularly post apocalyptic and/or dystopian societies focusing on the shift between a predominantly human world and another intelligent species, whether that's AI, zombies, aliens, or other, theoretically this book should have been a dream for me. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. The marketing of this book is very clever. Not much is given away from the description or title, shrouding the book in mystery, enticing you in. Meaning this appeals to a wide audience, not limiting itself to sci-fi fans and opening itself up to people who wouldn't ordinarily consider reading this genre.
The writing style continues to create an inclusive space that's accessible to those who wouldn't normally read sci-fi. Which is wonderful in terms of broadening the scope of what people choose to read; perhaps in future those who haven't read much sci-fi will be more inclined to read more of the genre after reading this book. The problem I had with this, as someone who reads a lot of sci-fi, is that the writing style is far too simplistic and reminiscent of throw-away books that don't have any real integrity to them. That's not to say that this book doesn't include heavy themes - it does. It's just that none of it is remotely original. Granted, that's incredibly difficult to do in modern sci-fi, which is often tackled by observing a new approach and offering different points of view to an already explored theme. Which, again, this book just didn't do. Once again, this works well as an introduction to sci-fi, but offers very little to those who have already read a lot and want to challenge their thoughts on the future of science and mankind.
Revisiting a previous point, I want to expand on my comment about the writing style being simplistic. A high proportion of the text was dialogue, which, in my opinion, doesn't allow enough insight into the characters thoughts, emotions and motivations. I find it to be incredibly reductive and disables character development, not allowing you to see the nuances in the changes and opinions of each character. I also found the few descriptive aspects very lacking, only giving you a vague and brief picture of the surrounding environment and the feelings surrounding that. Apart from the gore. That was very descriptive. Unnecessarily so. Don't get me wrong, I love gratuitous violence - when it's done well. It needs to add something to the story. Sadly, Carey only uses gore as a shock factor, taking away any real and long lasting emotional impact it could have had on the reader. There was so much potential with this book that just wasn't fulfilled.
Continuing on from Carey's lack of ability to build character development meant each character felt two dimensional, and, despite being different, all felt very similar in their speech patterns and actions. Which leads on to the narrator. I cannot understand the praise Finty Williams has received for this reading. Each of her portrayals of the characters sounded exactly the same, all sharing the same depth of voice, intonations and quaint, suburban monotonous tone of voice. I constantly had to rewind to figure out who was talking, not able to distinguish by either the narrators voice or the content of the dialogue who was speaking. Despite the sergeant and doctor both being severe and curt characters, Williams failed to bring this rough aspect of their characters to their voices, giving them a twee, feminine quality that just didn't fit. Everything felt light and reminded me of chick-lit, which is as far away from the content as you can get.
There's also the fact that this book was so obviously written by a man. The female characters were sexualised to the point where I was literally rolling my eyes as I was listening, making me feel incredibly uncomfortable. Which, once again, added absolutely nothing to the book. The rest of this review includes spoilers, so if you want to avoid these please stop reading here.
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With the insubstantial character development that was provided, it made absolutely no sense whatsoever that Justineau would have sex with the sergeant, especially whilst they were trapped in an attic with zombies banging about beneath them trying to get to them. The little integrity he had given her was stripped away in that moment as she was objectified beyond the point of no return.
Finally, how on earth did he think it was okay to try to pass off condoning mass genocide as the right thing to do at the end?! This made me so angry and regret the fact that I had persevered with this book to the end, despite disliking practically everything about it.
I cannot recommend this book, honestly I think it was awful and I'm not entirely sure why I stuck with it, most likely morbid curiosity. But, if you are new to sci-fi then maybe it's a good place to start as anything you read after this will be a masterpiece in comparison and by then you'll be hooked on sci-fi.