About the Book
If you could save the life of a loved one by trading in years of your own life, how many years would you give? How many lives could you save? Would you know when to stop?
Francis Broad has done just that and has negotiated the day of his death, now he must come to terms with the decisions he has made.
Three Gifts explores one man’s attempt to live a good life, his sense of responsibility, gratitude and what it means to love
Format: eARC (256 pages) Publisher: époque press
Publication date: 2nd March 2023 Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Find Three Gifts on Goodreads
Purchase links
Publisher | Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review
I’ve read several books published by époque press – El Hacho and Ghosts of Spring by Luis Carrasco, The Wooden Hill by Jamie Guiney and Seek the Singing Fish by Roma Wells – and not been disappointed yet. I’m pleased to say Three Gifts continues that pattern.
I loved the way the book explores family relationships and friendship. The tender relationship between Francis and his mother, Rose, is movingly described as is the young Francis’s feeling of bewilderment and powerlessness when his mother becomes ill. ‘This isn’t fair because there is nothing I can do, there is never anything I can do.’ A chance (or is it?) encounter offers him the opportunity to do the ‘something’ he’s been looking for – to give his mother and himself a gift beyond value: more time together. He has the same motivation many years later when a random event risks losing the person – besides his wife, Victoria – he holds most dear.
Francis’s friendship with Ben and Joy is the sort of friendship I think we’d all like to have. There’s fun and laughter, generosity and understanding. It was both wonderfully uplifting and, at certain points, intensely moving. And having Francis be a gardener with a desire to plant trees that will take years to grow to their full height but will persist after he’s gone was a clever touch.
Francis’s ‘trade’ is an act of willing self-sacrifice. But is trading years of your own life to prolong another’s actually the gift you think it is? What if it means you don’t live to see them grow up or fulfil their potential? Would they want you to have entered into such a contract if they’d known the consequence was spending less time with you? How would you approach the final days, hours, minutes of your life if you knew the precise point at which it would end?
In case you think this is sounding all rather serious and worthy, there’s also a lot of wry observation and humour in the book. For example, an arduous pregnancy is described as being like ‘a physical assault by surrealist plumbers’ and an act of sexual intimacy being like ‘two people trying to put on the same duffel coat in the dark’.
Whether you believe the ‘contract’ Francis enters into, and the events that follow, are the product of divine intervention, fate or simply coincidence, Three Gifts prompts you to think about what you would do in the same situation.
Three Gifts is a beautifully written, gentle and heartfelt story. It’s a book that will make you smile, laugh, ponder and maybe shed a tear or two. Personally, I don’t ask much more from a story.
My thanks to Sean at époque press for my digital review copy.
In three words: Tender, moving, engaging
About the Author
Mark A. Radcliffe is the author of two novels, Gabriel’s Angel (2010) and Stranger Than Kindness (2013), both published by Bluemoose and a collection of short stories, Superpowers (2020) published by Valley Press.
He is currently the Subject Lead for Creative Writing at West Dean College of Art and Conservation. Prior to that he worked as a nurse, a health journalist/columnist and a senior lecturer in mental health practice and nursing.
Mark lives in Hove with his wife Kate and swims in the sea a lot.
Connect with Mark
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