Regarding:
The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey
Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
[...]
Can someone with a distaste for
read it with enjoyment anyway, or is it a concept too far? |
A definite yes, it can be enjoyed anyway.
Oh, and the
never appears in the story.
Had I known the genre I would not have picked it up. The blurb hint
didn't give it away for me because I wasn't even thinking about this genre (the person who recommended it to me is not into that genre either). It took a good few pages before I realised where it was going, and by then it was too late, I was caught up and wanted to know more.
There is a strong science-fiction element to it (it seems to take the science of the situation more seriously than some), although I would describe it as character driven. There are holes, but that is to be expected. It comes close to hitting the aspects of the genre that I don't much like (the aspects that always seem to me like farce or out-of-place humour), but mostly manages to just touch up against them and move away again.
I liked some of the ideas. I liked the characters, and I liked the questions it raises, and I liked the fact that it kept on moving fast enough that its flaws didn't matter.
That book group question I quoted above ("How far does each of these books characterise children as grotesque and to be feared?") struck me as strange, or at least unexpected. Although I can see where it comes from, there was nothing about the story that made me think specifically of children as "grotesque and to be feared". The situation may have been that, but the children, no.