Carrie Fisher once said, “I don’t think Christmas is necessarily about things. It’s about being good to one another.” This is the spirit in which Laura Barnett has written Gifts – a novel that consists of 12 loosely connected stories, introducing 12 individuals, who are searching for the perfect Christmas gift for someone they love. In the run up to Christmas 2021, much soul-searching is being done about what is important in a (hopefully) post-lockdown festive season – how can we express what we mean to each other with something that can be wrapped and placed under a tree? There is a renewed appreciation for the power of community that infuses this set of stories with the sort of solace many readers will respond very positively to.
Barnett’s debut novel, The Versions of Us (2015), was a number one bestseller that established her talent for illuminating the beauty in mundanity, for elevating the ordinariness of life to something celebratory. Turning her attention to the fraught emotional landscape of Christmas offers much scope for her to deploy this talent to great effect. Barnett’s powers of observation result in many poignant moments throughout this collection as she turns her spotlight on the tiny human details that unlock a character’s whole world – an elderly lady in a hospital bed trying to apply her lipstick without a mirror, a rescue pet returned, a pair of carved wooden dogs wrapped in tissue paper inside a plastic bag, a carer touching the scars on her patient’s back. In fact, these moments offer such powerful insights into the characters, that much of what is said as a prelude to them, or in their wake, feels extraneous. The instinct to explain undermines these moments that would stand more powerfully on their own.
The 12 characters that we meet represent a diverse spectrum of people from across a small English community. It is refreshing to encounter an examination of such a cross-section of relationships – grandparents and grandchildren, carer and nurse, neighbours, lifelong friends, parents and their children, godchildren and godparents, lovers, spouses, siblings – and to have all the relationships receive equal importance on the page. Barnett writes with particular empathy about both late adolescence/early adulthood and the elderly -–which is to say, Barnett is excellent at capturing vulnerability on the page.
The author "adores Christmas" while acknowledging the pressure that comes with an expectation of a picture-perfect festive season, especially when the reality is so much more complex than that.
It is a challenge, however, to introduce 12 characters in their individual chapters with enough depth that that the reader will engage with their story in a meaningful way. In an attempt to overcome this, Barnett offers significant amounts of exposition to introduce each new character – flashbacks sit within flashbacks – and so it feels as if we spend more time in the past, catching up with each character’s life up to this moment, than we do in the present of the book. Barnett is at her strongest when the narrative is alive, driving forward and so the lengthy backstory sections often feel they are holding her back from what she does best. A further challenge is presented with the narrative voice of the collection which runs through all the stories. Whether we are with a teenager, her grandmother, or a character for whom English is their second language, their internal voice is the same which neutralises their authenticity on the page and risks becoming monotonous. A greater denouement to tie the threads together in a deeper way would have also elevated the work to something more substantial upon its conclusion. The narrator’s voice, nonetheless, maintains a warm, engaging tone and so is friendly company throughout.
Barnett’s ambition for this collection was to write a book about “how wonderful and sad and difficult and happy and strange Christmas can be”. The author “adores Christmas” while acknowledging the pressure that comes with an expectation of a picture-perfect festive season, especially when the reality is so much more complex than that. This tension runs throughout the book. Barnett skirts around the danger zones of Christmas, writing with thoughtful insight about loneliness, loss, and family trauma, before finding some light in the darkness to restore hope and point towards the expectation of a happily ever after. This pulling of punches will read as saccharine to some; to others it will be exactly the sort of uplifting positivity that they hope a book set at Christmas will bring them. A gritty, realist, interrogation of the darker, challenging side of Christmas this is not – which will be good news to many. If instead you are looking for a warm, engaging, friendly festive read, with some light and shade, then this could be the perfect Christmas gift for you.
