Gifts (review)

To see that your life is a story while you’re in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well. It’s unwise, though, to think you know how it’s going to go, or how it’s going to end. That’s to be known only when it’s over.

• Title: Gifts
• Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
• Genre: Fantasy
• Year: 2004

It’s easy to take a figure like Ursula K. Le Guin for granted and, even though she’s been producing consistently brilliant fiction for over forty years (she is a Nebula Grandmaster after all), it seems the genre buzz always follows the latest craze or new writer making a big splash. Well, Le Guin isn’t about buzz and hype, and she’s a better, wiser writer by miles than most of what you’ll see on the fantasy shelves of today. And it would be a mistake for fans of fantastic fiction to overlook her recent series entitled Annals of the Western Shore, of which Gifts is the first volume, just because these books are marketed as Young Adult novels.

Let me say right now I don’t understand the whole YA thing; when I was a ‘young adult’ (large child more like) the distinction did not exist: there were kid’s books about farm animals wearing hats and licorice houses, and there was the rest of the library. So whether Gifts makes sense as a YA or not I don’t rightly know — but I do know it’s written with a rare kind of intelligence and insight that characterizes the best fiction. I suppose the young protagonist and his difficulties in coming to terms with his gift, in coming of age, is a natural fit for the YA audience; but regardless of marketing distinctions this is a book anyone should enjoy.

Gifts is told by Orrec, a boy that grows into manhood over the course of the novel. His father is a brantor, the head of an Upland clan, in a rural world of small farms and pasturage and cattle raiding reminiscent of the medieval Scottish Highlands. The Uplands are dominated by various clans, and each possess a gift, an innate magical power. Some gifts are beneficent, such as the power to heal; and some can be used for good or ill, as Gry, Orrec’s best friend, is able to use her gift of knowing animals to train them or summon them for a hunt. But many gifts, such as the power to twist a man’s limbs or inflict a slow, wasting illness, are destructive — Orrec’s family gift is such a power.

As a child, Orrec eagerly looks forward to using his power, which manifests itself in early adolescence, around the age of puberty. His family gift is that of unmaking, literally turning order into chaos; at a glance dissolving a tree into a mound of blackened fiber, or turning a beast — or man — into a sack of deliquescent flesh. Orrec delights in the tales of his ancestors who used the power to protect their clan, even the dark tale of one who went mad and had to blind himself to protect those around him. But Orrec’s development of the gift does not go smoothly, and it is thought he may be a danger to others, and himself must wear a blindfold to ensure his family and friends do not come to harm — as well as to protect himself from the demands that would be placed upon him. The hint of such a ‘wild gift’ is enough to intimidate the enemies of his father, for a time, but things begin to develop differently than expected as Orrec learns just what his blindness may truly mean.

Le Guin writes with an amazing eye for the mundane details of life, and her sparse, earthy prose conveys Orrec’s world with authenticity and simple beauty. Her characters, too, are smartly realized and completely natural; and one thing she’s done especially well is realistically convey how the possession of a gift affects the personality of the gifted. Combine this with a world rich in folklore and family history, and compelling conflicts at every level of the story and you have a novel from a master storyteller at the height of her powers, and one that has me eagerly looking forward to the remainder of this series.

• Gifts at Amazon
• Ursula K. Le Guin’s website