The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey

You may not immediately recognise the name ‘M. R. Carey’, but Mike’s recent book, The Girl With All the Gifts (2014), was a runaway success here in the UK. Initially one of those books whose reputation grew via word of mouth (or perhaps these days that means via social media) interest and sales rocketed when it was highlighted as a ‘Book of the Week’ on one of the national BBC Radio’s most popular radio shows.

It quickly became one of those ‘must-read’ books, with many readers who don’t normally read ‘that sort of thing’ surprised by how much they enjoyed a really good read of what is, basically, a contemporary zombie tale.

It was made into a movie in 2016, which garnered moderate box-office returns but great reviews and a BAFTA nomination for Mike for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer.

So what has this to do with The Boy on the Bridge? Well, Boy is a book set in the same world as Girl With All the Gifts, but it is an earlier time – when the creation of zombies, here named ‘Hungries’, and the decline of civilisation, known as The Breakdown, has not been that long ago.

It is also a surprisingly good novel that raises the high standard set by GWATG.

The story begins with a tank-like research vehicle, The Rosalind Franklin (aka ‘Rosie’) travelling through the ruined landscape of Britain trying to find the solution to determine a cure for the virus which has struck the world.

The crew of the vehicle are an odd and disparate bunch who are forced to work together for the greater good, so to speak. There are a group of scientists, led by Dr. Alan Fournier, who are looked after by a group of military soldiers, led by Colonel Isaac Carlisle, whilst on their dangerous mission. The relationship between the two factions is fraught and rarely good. Two disparate groups, forced to work together, is not an easy situation, even when the chances of them discovering a solution look increasingly slim.

The tension is increased by further complications. The two leaders of the scientists and the military do not get on with each other, each jostling for supremacy, determined to try and keep some remnant of civilisation intact. One of the scientists, Doctor Samrina Khan, has fallen pregnant and is now due the arrival of a baby imminently. Under her care is Stephen Greaves, an autistic teenage boy whose intelligence has so far created the anti-bacterial gel that stops humans being attacked by the Hungries. He finds social situations extremely difficult and puts his own life in danger trying to deduce a cure to the virus. He may however have stumbled across a possible solution when, on one of his sorties, he meets a semi-feral group of children who seem to survive living without protection among the Hungries.

I must admit that that brief description does not sound like an exciting novel. My first thoughts were that it reminded me of being on a long coach journey with no escape, surrounded by people you didn’t like and who clearly didn’t like you.

But the skill of the writer is to draw us into the situation, to make us feel for the characters and make us imagine we are there. Mike manages to convey the feelings of the protagonists with surprising depth and yet skillful precision. I was most impressed with his creation of Stephen, an autistic genius who, like Melanie before him, is an outsider, a character with a gift but one that most others do not quite understand.

There are parallels here that mirror GWATG. For example, Stephen is mentored by ‘Rina, as Melanie was taught by Miss Justineau. Again, there is conflict between the scientists and the military, although the skill of the writer is to create relationships that are not quite as simple as that might suggest. The leader of the Military, Colonel Isaac Carlisle, is not the usual jingoistic militarist we expect, but instead a rather sad character who has done horrendous things in the past for the greater good and yet even now tries to hold everything together, despite the world collapsing around him. Rosie is the same vehicle from GWATG, and Beacon, the home base in GWATG, is there in Boy as well, although both are subtly different, earlier variants of something we recognise from Girl.

Mike has an unerring skill of quickly creating characters you understand, even if you don’t always like them, and is terrific at then putting these people into situations that may initially seem mundane but soon become anything but. When Rosie’s crew attempts to return to Beacon, we find that things have changed from when they left. A military coup has led to a shift in power with repercussions for those in Rosie, and may have served to hasten the decline of the survivor’s circumstances further. Only Stephen may hold a solution to the virus – but if it is, can it be made useful in time as the world falls apart around him?

If you liked Girl With All The Gifts, you’ll love Boy on the Bridge as much, possibly more so. When I read GWATG, I couldn’t put it down. This is also the case, if not more so, with Boy on the Bridge. Though it starts slow, the book skilfully builds to an unstoppable end.

The ending is as good as I expected, though the Epilogue is a real surprise, going beyond the first novel with something rather of an I Am Legend feel, but surprisingly optimistic.

In short, The Boy on the Bridge is everything I had hoped for, and then some. The characterisation is great, more complex than I expected and extremely perceptive, the tension skilfully applied and artfully used. Mike has managed something very difficult – to take something the reader may think they already know about and then create something that builds on, but also improves on, what was already great.

The Boy on the Bridge by Mike Carey

Published by Orbit, May 2017

400 pages

ISBN: 978-0356503530

Review by Mark Yon, May 2017.

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