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

Title: The Girl with All the Gifts
Author: M.R. Carey (Mike Carey)
Original Publication Date: June 6, 2014
Publisher: Orbit
Pages: 460
Genre/s: Science-Fiction, Post-Apocalypse, Zombies












The Girl with All the Gifts is the book with all the treats.

The Girl with All the Gifts is Pandora's Box

Deciding what to have for supper was a subtle battle of attrition. The fact that Pasta won is a victory I could have lived with. Working within the defined limits of cooking, I prepared everything that was needed, left the Pasta boiling, and waited. Everything was going smoothly, almost asking, begging, that something go wrong, just as it does every time I walk into this alien dimension called kitchen. I should have stuck there, waited for the pasta to be firm, except that I went ahead and read this, and that's when everything started to go pleasantly wrong. The only conscious act I seem to remember aside from reading is flipping through the introduction. Before I knew it, I was 1/3s done, with it, an indefinable black mass. Alas, I have burned the victor beyond recognition, and necessarily induced a palatal fit of sadness. No worries. This is, after all, the book with all the treats, if anything, it will get me through the night. And it did, for if night is defined by nothing else but a natural state of rest during which our eyes are closed and one becomes unconscious, it was then a very foreign concept in that limited instance. I went to bed, but not to sleep. I stirred and turned a page, I changed positions and turned another. And then again, as if sucked by this ineluctable book-induced vacuum where time is but a word and urgency a concept, I turned the final page. I just finished reading The Girl with All the Gifts and it brutally severed me from my reading reverie. It was 4 A.M. I have not prepared my arguments for today's moot court practice which will surely lead to a mediocre if not a laughable performance, I did not slip out of my clothes which left me aching on undesirable regions, my eyes were unsuitably watery, my eyelids were falling as if tied down with concrete barriers, I was so lightheaded as if I myself was walking on air. I did not sleep at all. No worries. After all, I just read The Girl with All the Gifts. And it has made all the difference.

And yes, it's that GOOD.

disclaimer: possible science-fiction bias in play

caveat: proper review forthcoming, perhaps after a good dinner and some sufficient sleep.

Every Day by David Levithan

Author: Every Day
Title: David Levithan
Original Publicaiton Date: 2012
Pages: 322


It would seem that David Levithan has no love for the traditional linear narrative form of story writing. The Lover's Dictionary (1 Star) is in, as its namesake suggests, dictionary entries. Every Day too is not of the traditional linear form. It has no beginnings, and it knows no ends. It began where it ended, and it ends where it began. Searching for closure here would be an act in vain.

Every Day tells us the existence of an entity which inhabits a body for just one day. For one day it gets to live in that body. On the next day, it is randomly transferred to yet another body. The concept is terrifying and hauntingly beautiful. But David Levithan chose the dilemma of loving in that momentary living as the focal point of the story. In so doing he presents us various lives of what can be readily seen as stereotypical teenagers like metalheads, depressed individuals, jocks, cheerleaders, nerds, and teens struggling with their identities.

I like the two messages I picked up in this book. The form without end and beginning gives credence to the leitmotif that we should live in the present just as the entity does, living day by day in different bodies. The second that love is universal, that it is not solely anchored on our physical facet but on the person as a whole, that it is not just between man and woman. I think this book made a lot more sense because Levithan did not endeavor to elaborate on the mysterious aspects but instead played on the emotions involved, I like that he did not clear up the mysteries. You may feel cheated, ending up where he started, but Levithan played that real good.