I originally reviewed The Gift by Patrick O’Leary on October 13th 2006.
The Gift was 22 years in the making and the time invested shows on every page. The Gift is so beautifully written that you can randomly open up to any page, pick a paragraph, begin reading and be amazed at the prose.
The Gift opens on a ship that is stuck in the water waiting out the night for the wind to pick up again. The ship recently picked up a Teller who is allowed free passage on any ship under the Kings order. We find ourselves thrown into a tense situation that we know nothing about. Here is a part of that opening. It clearly evocates the tension onboard if not the immediate cause of it:
This is a story about monsters. The real ones. Not the ones we tell children about.
The Captain of the helm and the little Teller in the bow watched the sailors one by one leave their hammocks below, and admitting the impossibility of sleep, make their groggy way up to the deck where they stood restlessly together in groups of two or three, looking warily over the sheer water as smooth as any mirror and as black as the pitch that sealed their hull. The full moon cast the only light in that windless night, a comfortless light that made the shadows darker and all their faces white as the body they had pulled up in their nets that afternoon.
No one spoke of it then or now. She was beautiful, or had been. Beautiful and blonde and not a stitch on her. No blood either. No marks or cuts or clues. That would have been enough – more than enough, even if her sagging belly hadn’t born the purple stripes of a recent child.
Once they had untangled her from their nets, everyone stood around the body waiting for someone to suggest what to do. Strangely, none of the sailors asked where she had come from. In fact, they acted as if none of them had ever seen a woman before. Some would not look at her. Some could not look away. Some thought of their wives. Some thought of their daughters. Some, of their mothers.
Finally, the Captain, a tall, hard man with a white beard and one hand, instructed them to tie something to its feet and toss it back. There was a prolonged search for something expendable and weighty enough to do the deed. Theirs was a modest vessel, sparsely supplied and fit only for small trips to stock the fish markets on the rocky coast, a three day journey out and back, barring storms, was the usual. In truth, there wasn’t really much debris, or comfort for that matter, to be found onboard. But eventually one mate discovered in a forward hold an old anchor net of rocks that had rotted out of use. Reluctantly they lashed it to her ankles and dragged her to the edge. Her hair left a wet mop smear on the scale-laden boards of the deck and it was still there, twelve hours later, splitting their boat in two with a black stream that reflected the stars. The men stepped over it.
In this haunting disquiet moment we are presented with a mystery, we want to know more about the woman and we will but not until the very end. In order to pass the night The Teller proceeds to tell the crew a tale. The tale is of course the novel we are reading. The Teller introduces us to our three main characters and a bevy of supporting characters. We learn of the magician who is so bent on learning his craft that he becomes twisted and falls under the control of a dark creature named Tomen giving up his name in the process and becoming The Usher, a dark conduit for Tomen. We learn of a young king who is deaf, his call for a cure and the reward that it holds and how The Usher cures the king and curses him at the same time. Lastly we learn of the boy Tim, the woodcutter’s son, whose parents are killed by The Usher, who saves the king and becomes his most trusted friend. Tim and the King will form a bond and make it their goal to destroy The Usher.
Like other great novels The Gift is a story that doesn’t summarize well. The Gift is not your standard fantasy quest that romps through an alien world. Like The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, The Gift is a story about stories. The story being told is embedded with nested stories. Most important to the tale being told is the symbiotic relationship it shares with the nested stories. Nothing is off hand and everything serves a purpose, you may be faced with a mystery or a dilemma late in the story whose solution might be had in what was mistaken for a throwaway story much earlier in the novel. The story is intricate and further readings (much like Door Number Three) give clues to the story and force you to appreciate there placement. Not only is it complex but it is enjoyable and compulsively readable.
Marathon runners and other athletes always strive to finish stronger then they start. Its sound advice that has broad applications. At some point late in the telling of the tale The Teller informs the crew that things are about to get scary. It’s at this point that the story really kicks in the gear. The individual threads of the story converge and O’Leary’s already formidable story telling strengths conspire to make sure you’re sockless. The ending of this book is one of my all time favorites, it’s that powerful. The story of the dead women is told and there is a final set of revelations that is startling. The final third of the book explicitly ventures into science fiction territory though the characters aren’t aware of it since the technology that’s present for them is indistinguishable from the magic. In fact looking back those science fiction elements have been in place the entire time. I think I even picked up on a reference to Door Number Three buried in there that I missed the first couple of times.
