Goodreads Review: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s difficult for me to review Carrie Ryan’s first novel, The Forest of Hands and Teeth objectively–because I can’t help but feel like there were two very different books packed into the volume’s three-hundred-some-odd pages.

The first was the delicately story that was clearly and wisely aimed at young adults: that of Mary, who lives in a village isolated from the rest of the world thanks to a zombie plague that rages outside its gates. In this tale, when Mary’s parents become infected, and the man who previously expressed an intention to court her turns her back on her, she is forced to join the mysterious Sisterhood, a religious organization that rules the village and guides its inhabitants through every stage of their carefully controlled lives.

In the second tale, Mary flees the village with a handful of people, including two brothers who both love her. Though ostensibly the more action-packed of the two stories, as Mary and her band struggle to reach the coast, this is largely a meditation on marriage and commitment, and on the sacrifices we are forced to make when we promise ourselves to someone else.

You might be surprised to learn that I found the first story here far more successful than the second.

Within the novel’s first third, I found Ryan’s prose particularly beautiful and captivating. Mary’s story was told with a delicate touch, and the poetic, slightly archaic tone only complimented the rich post-apocalyptic setting. The world within the village reminded me of the similar dystopia found in John Christopher’s Tripod series at least as much as it was redolent of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. Seemingly medieval, seemingly peaceful and simple, this setting only made the horrors that Mary experienced in her life in the Sisterhood that much more terrifying. I read quickly, and was deeply absorbed: I wanted to discover the secrets of Mary’s world just as much as Mary did. Though I was troubled by her dithering affections for two fairly flat men, Travis and Harry, it seemed clear to me that this bland love triangle was subordinate to the drama of Mary’s life in the Cathedral.

I was unfortunately wrong about that.

The second half of the novel, which follows Mary’s progress through the eponymous forest along with her band of relatives and suitors, was almost entirely about this love triangle. The mysteries of the Sisterhood are unsummarily dismissed in favor of questions which I frankly found less compelling: Why is Gabrielle different from the other zombies? Will Mary ever learn to read Roman numerals? Will she choose Harry or Travis? Concerning the last “mystery,” Mary waffles between the brothers several times, even if through most of the novel both men are bland ciphers, totally lacking in personality.

We finally do get a conversation–just one–with Travis around page 220 of the book where we start learning why he’s drawn to Mary and what might, conceivably, make him a sympathetic and compelling love interest. This is during a long stretch of the novel where we’re plunged into a domestic setting. Mary seems to have chosen Travis, and they’re trying to make a life together despite the fact that they were both betrothed to others, and despite the fact that Mary’s true passions will always lie elsewhere. The idea of this theme interested me, even if I didn’t find it quite as juicy as the book’s first half. Unfortunately, I found the execution a bit shallow and cursory.

I think this may be the nature of the beast, when you make marriage and commitment and the choices we make when promising ourselves to others the centerpiece of a novel aimed at teenagers. That’s not to say that I think that teenagers are incapable of understanding these themes, but more to say that many just aren’t interested in them–I know I wasn’t back then. And the brevity of this plot line does these themes a fundamental disservice. Had Ryan been writing a longer book, one aimed (say) at adult women, rather than at teenage girls, she would have had more room to explore the issues surrounding Mary’s commitments in-depth. The men in question could have been rendered more vividly and completely. And I would have felt more engaged with the issue of her choice.

But as it stood, I never really cared that deeply at all. Certainly not the way I did during the beginning of the novel, when our primary question was What’s going on here? rather than Who will she choose?

In the end, I can’t help but wish that this had been two books: the first, a riveting YA novel exploring an oppressive religious organization that took advantage of man’s vulnerability during the zombie apocalypse, featuring Mary, our curious and determined heroine. And a second book–longer, quieter even when the zombies intruded, which focused on Mary-the-woman, rather than Mary-the-girl, and explored the sacrifices, romantic or not, that adults make during desperate times.

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