#BlogTour ‘The Gifts’ by Liz Hyder

About the book…

October 1840. A young woman staggers alone through a forest in Shropshire as a huge pair of impossible wings rip themselves from her shoulders.

Meanwhile, when rumours of a ‘fallen angel’ cause a frenzy across London, a surgeon desperate for fame and fortune finds himself in the grips of a dangerous obsession, one that will place the women he seeks in the most terrible danger . . .

‘The Gifts’ is the astonishing debut adult novel from the lauded author of Bearmouth’  . A gripping and ambitious book told through five different perspectives and set against the luminous backdrop of nineteenth century London, it explores science, nature and religion, enlightenment, the role of women in society and the dark danger of ambition.

My thanks to Tracy Fenton of ‘Compulsive Readers’ for the blog tour invite, and publishers Zaffre for my gifted review copy of ‘The Gifts’ which is out in hardcover and e-book formats from February 22nd 2022.

Opening with a startling and emotive scene of a winged girl, stumbling through a field in pain, not even aware of what is happening to her until she feels blood on her shoulders and sees her alarmingly changed shadow, you know you are in the hands of a masterful narrative woven by a consummate storyteller.

With little to no information to go on, you are immediately concerned with her welfare more than the origins of her wonderful wings. She appears to have fallen into our world, and our consciousness, and then you are yanked straight out of this perilous situation to be introduced to the other narrators of this tale, set in  the early 1900’s.

There are Samuel and Edward, both surgeons in perpetual battle to uncover the mysteries of the human condition, to the point where the patient before them is less a person than a point to score.

The only triumphant and unalienable win which Edward has over Richard is his wife, Annie, who appears as an example of his wealth and social standing. She , like the furnishings and accoutrements of their house, exist  to encourage the confidence of others in his surgical and medical skills. Her own skills as an artist are seen as secondary, almost dabbling rather than as a professional in her own right. Her worth , or rather, lack of it, is seen in her ‘inability’ to provide the expected child as proof of her womanhood, which is rather concerning after three years of marriage. At least it is to Annie.

The angel and Annie are the first glimpses of the way that women are regarded at this time, along with Natalya, a woman outcast for shaming her family and adrift in a strange world, telling tales to the children who live in the same  boarding house as her, and Mary, niece of a journalist whose skills have been eroded by grief and alcoholism, to the point where she is the one who finishes and submits most of his articles. Only her cousin, Richard, is aware of this, and it is another example of the male led society of the time which seeks to subvert and own the physical bodies of the women they come into contact with, or take credit for their gifts.

The last narrator is Etta, a botanist and explorer who , again, moves against the tide in every way, from how she stores and collates her samples, to the way she stands up for herself to be seen as a person not a fly to swat away from ‘men’s work’. It is truly sorrowful when the man she had hoped to marry, chooses a woman who looks the part but has not an original thought in her body, And you just know that as much as she is trapped by her refusal to hide who she is, it is expected of Henry, the man who broke her heart, to choose a ‘suitable wife’, and by suitable, they-society-does not mean a woman with opinions, thoughts and notions.

Her father-thankfully dead before the book begins because honestly you would want to strangle him-says the following on the occasion of Henry’s marriage to the human version of a butterfly-

”As if he would be interested in you! You would be nothing more than a curio to a man like him.As if he would marry you of all women when he has the freedom to choose.”

And there is the rub-men have that freedom bestowed upon them by the nature of being born male, whilst women have to put up,or deal with the consequences.

Into this melting pot falls, literally, the winged woman, an anomaly who challenges the natural and ecumenical explanations of the existence of life .

Between the woman who wants to write about it, the surgeons who seek to understand the physiology of the wings, and those who see the angel, more typically represented in Biblical terms as male agents of God, as a subversion of the way that things should be.

And then, another woman grows wings.

Suddenly, there is so much at stake from the religious, societal and medical quarters, that you know that strong hearted characters will be required to advocate for, uncover the truth of , and, indeed, rescue these women.

All of their gifts -another anomaly as so often talents were explained away as ‘gifts’ rather than acknowledgements of the hours of work, put in to make what seems natural and obvious, but is always underlined with practice, research and more practice-will be needed as much as their strength to stand against what they are told to believe in, and what they know, and feel, to be true.

A truly superb and engaging read that brings history to vivid, breathing life, this is an incredible gothic thriller in the tradition of Jess Kidd and Jessie Burton. It comes highly recommended by this reader, and I can see myself re-reading this again very very soon!

About the author…

Liz Hyder is a writer and creative workshop leader. She has been part of Writing West Midlands’s Room 204 writer development programme since 2016. In early 2018, she won The Bridge Award/Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer Award. Bearmouth is her first novel.

Named The Times Children’s Book of the Year in 2019, Bearmouth was the Waterstones Children’s Book for Older Readers 2020 and the winner of the Branford Boase Award 2020. It has also been shortlisted for the UKLA Awards and nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2021. Her first book for adults, The Gifts, is publishing in February 2022 in the UK. Originally from London, she now lives in South Shropshire in a small medieval market town surrounded by hills, books and plants

Links-https://www.lizhyder.co.uk/

Twitter @LondonBessie @ZaffreBooks @Tr4cyF3nt0n