Review: The Forest of Hands & Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Damn, the mixed-bag. I recently had a review like this, and now another. The kind of book that dishes out enjoyment and frustration at the same time. This one is not necessarily that new (my colleague Chuck McKenzie has already reviewed it too), but I was urged to read it, and thus must pour my opinion onto the page. The novel is The Forest of Hands & Teeth by Carrie Ryan (Gollancz/Orion, 2009). Just like the frantic scramble after the boy-wizard’s fate was sealed, publishers and readers seem desperate for a new young adult ‘horror’ book to top the Twilight series. This novel does that (the film rights have even been announced). But, at the risk of being unpopular, I don’t think it does enough.

Why? This novel seemed to mock me, in that at times it was written so well, with a frantic pace and lovely descriptions, that it almost covered up the bad writing elements. Almost.

The novel takes place as Mary, our narrator, lets a moment of time slip away when she was supposed to have being guarding her mother. Guarding her from what? The fence that surrounds their village. The fence that keeps out the Unconsecrated, the zombies who are a product of a cataclysmic event that happened seven generations prior and, as far as Mary knows, wiped the rest of humanity from the earth. But her mother approaches the fence in the vain attempt to find her husband, who was recently ‘turned’, and gets too close.

In a brutal start, Mary watches her mother succumb to the zombie infection and be tossed out of the village into the rest of the Unconsecrated. Mary then misses the Harvest Celebration, where boy and girl are partnered with the intention of getting married and eventually spawning life to ensure the village retains its ways. Being an unclaimed girl means she must join the Sisterhood, who rule the village with the written word (whether it is an altered bible is cloudy but likely). Here she learns her life was never as it seems, and many people are hiding secrets. It fuels her desire to leave the village, but amidst the whole zombie menace she must fight for the brother she thinks she loves.

I’m going to write some spoilers here, should you wish to skip, well, to the end…

One of my favourite pieces in the novel is the recurrence of the red-cloaked girl, Gabrielle, who has come from outside the village and is immediately ‘turned’ by the Sisterhood, a move that is the town’s undoing. The creature is so desperate to feed on Mary and her gang that she constantly slams herself into the fences, following them on a long journey until she is badly broken. The image of her crawling towards Mary, still trying to attack her yet barely able to move, barely held together, is so powerful that it almost saved the novel on its own, and is a great piece of writing to show a different side to zombies. It’s a pity the character was forgotten pages later.

Now, as soon as I read the blurb for this novel, I thought that Carrie Ryan had basically watched ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and ‘The Village’ one night and decided to combine the two (perhaps over a drunken dare). On simple terms, this is exactly what happens in her novel – people are trapped in a somewhat-sealed area whilst zombies wait outside, desperate to get in and consume them; and there is a village whose way of life goes unquestioned, whose rules are governed by a group of elders, and of course the elders may have been deceptive as to the ultimate truth of the world outside.

Beyond the subtle writing loopholes (How the hell does one prepare a fence around a huge village during a zombie invasion, and then find the equipment and materials to repair and extend it? How could you know how to read but have never seen Roman Numerals (although, notice the numbers match many chapters with Gabrielle in them)? And how is it that rare photographs are hidden in a chest, untouched by insects and humans? And so on…), and beyond Mary’s chapter-by-chapter repeat of the same internal debates, as if we forgot them, what really irks me about The Forest of Hands & Teeth is that the plot is event-driven.

What I mean is that at barely any point (save for the last scenes) does Mary make any choices herself about what to do and where to go. For such an emotional character (much of the novel is an internal struggle, with some genuinely good perceptions albeit for such a young character), Mary really, rarely gets to act on these emotions. She spends so long debating on whether or not to go outside the village that, instead of finally giving in to her desire to do so, she is simply thrust outwards when the zombies break the barrier to the village. Likewise, she is torn between brothers, one whom she thinks she loves and one whom she is betrothed to. And rather than finally making a choice, they all have to run from another invasion and get separated, with Mary ending up alone with one of the brothers. Emotional choice squashed, drama fizzled. Part of the novel is supposed to be about Mary following her heart, but the plot is just too convenient to Mary in order for her to do that.

In my opinion, the character should be driving the events in the plot, or, if the events are beyond their control, at least reacting to them in a more convincing, unique way. It is only the end stretch that is a saving grace, where Mary holds on to her belief and sacrifices almost everything to see whether or not it comes true. This was a very powerful end, which I thoroughly enjoyed. If only Ryan had written with the same power throughout the novel.

So you see, that is why I am torn. That is why this review is a mixed-bag. Because I do like the novel, I just think it could have been better. Perhaps you should check it out for yourself? Don't worry, I didn't give it all away.