Britannica defines magical realism as “narrative strategy that is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction”. The Gifts is a work of magical realism in which otherwise ordinary women suddenly grow wings from their shoulders, often after having suffered traumatic events. It is set in the firmly patriarchal society of 19th century England in the infancy of medical science, where surgeons treated operations as performance and body snatchers did a brisk trade. There is particular focus on one ambitious surgeon, Edward Meake, who in the grip of religious fervour, becomes obsessed with these “angels”. He wishes to achieve acclaim and status by studying them and presenting them to the science community.

Although it is a well-written book, I cannot say that I really enjoyed this one. It has a number of strikes against it in my view.
• There are too many characters and overlapping plots.
• While it may have been a reality of the time period, I found the animal cruelty very disturbing.
• What the heck were the angels supposed to represent? I could speculate on various interpretations, but I don’t really know.
• There were multiple points of view which on a couple of occasions became muddled together and confusing to me.
• The character portrayal tended to be somewhat simplistic – no one is either all good or all bad.

It is a long book but I read through fairly quickly given the extremely short chapters. If you are a fan of magical realism and enjoy this time period then you might appreciate this novel, but for the reasons above it was not a hit with me.