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The Gift
Fifteen-year-old Davy Price has the gift--the ability to see into other people's minds. Sometimes he feels having this gift is fun, but most of the time it's frightening. Especially when he can see his own family's secrets--and realizes they are in danger. Is Davy's gift really a curse?
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
7 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
About the author
Peter Dickinson
142 books156 followersPeter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson OBE FRSL was a prolific English author and poet, best known for children's books and detective stories.
Peter Dickinson lived in Hampshire with his second wife, author Robin McKinley. He wrote more than fifty novels for adults and young readers. He won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Award twice, and his novel The Blue Hawk won The Guardian Award in 1975.
Peter Dickinson lived in Hampshire with his second wife, author Robin McKinley. He wrote more than fifty novels for adults and young readers. He won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Award twice, and his novel The Blue Hawk won The Guardian Award in 1975.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 30, 2021
“Were you knowing you had the gift, Davy? […] It is said to run in your family—Dadda’s family. Often it misses a generation. But usually there is one of your blood alive who can see pictures in other people’s minds.”
The Gift is a powerful story for teenage readers from the pen of Peter Dickinson, a novel that works at several levels to appeal to many ages, emotional capacities and intellects. It also crosses the permeable frontiers between fantasy, social realism, and thriller, as well as border-hopping between North Wales and England’s South Midlands.
Davy Price is the youngest in a dysfunctional family, with a father who’s a fly-by-night chancer, a mother who occasionally ‘disappears’ on holiday with male acquaintances, an older brother who’ll become involved with a splinter group of Welsh nationalists, and a sister who doesn’t stand fools gladly but whom Davy values as a confidante.
After one particular familial upheaval the three children get dumped on the father’s mother — the trio’s fierce Welsh granny — and her gentle husband, known as Dadda, on a hill farm near a disused slate quarry. This is when Davy first discovers he has the ‘gift’ of seeing other people’s vision, and learns the legend of how certain generations of the family have it, and how it can in fact be more a curse than otherwise. It will take a major crisis to bring things to a head, and a situation of great danger which may or may not free Davy of his dubious talent.
A few years later, when Davy is 13 or 14, the family finally seems to have settled down in a new-build but still developing town in the Midlands. Though Davy, Penny and Ian’s dad is still wheeler-dealing in the background things are seemingly going well — until Davy starts experiencing unnerving visions whenever he is in a relaxed state. His inner eye is subjected to images from what the individual is seeing but they’re shot through with vivid colours and, when the individual is clearly disturbed, squiggly lines spreading rapidly over the observed scene.
The individual, whom Davy dubs Wolf, is connected to two other people Davy designates Mr Black Hat and Monkey, and soon the youngster realises they’re further connected to his father and the construction site which Davy is studying for a geography project. After further dramas the family return to the isolated Welsh farm for their Christmas holidays, but past events are destined to catch up to them all in a nail-biting conclusion.
I hung on to my copy of this after I first read it three decades ago, realising that although I’d thoroughly enjoyed it I hadn’t really understood its nuances and undercurrents. It’s a dark tale, to be sure, but I knew that Dickinson creates really believable individuals and plonks them into situations which test their imagination, courage and fortitude. What I did lack at the time was a fuller appreciation of its context and its cultural backstory.
In some ways Dickinson’s novel was prescient, to some extent anticipating the activities of Meibion Glyndŵr (the Sons of Glendower) from 1979 in firebombing English holiday homes in Wales, but also reflecting the more paramilitaristic approach of other clandestine groups at the time. Ian’s enthusiastic allegiance to his unaffiliated cell doesn’t extend to a reverence for history, but Davy knows that his gift is due to an incident in the Berwyn mountains, during the guerilla war waged by Owain Glyndŵr for independence in the years around 1400.
Incidentally, Dickinson composed a splendid alliterative “translation” of a Welsh poem about Glyndŵr, to suggest what led to the acquisition of the gift:
"By Maen Mynor stayed Glyn Dwr’s standard.
Galaes his hawk gripped at his gauntlet.
Through the eyes of his hawk he viewed hill and valley.
He saw the Saxons scurry before his soldiers…"
But there are also traditions nearer in time that Dickinson draws into his narrative: the tenuous living to be got by hill farmers; fading memories of a time when Welsh women wore hats “black and tall and pointy, like a witch’s” says Davy, and lace shawls; the knowledge that working the slate quarries was dangerous work, especially when it involved explosives; a sensitivity towards language, and intonation, and poetry.
And through everything Dickinson has a skill of evoking individuals who, however flawed they are — and some are very flawed — deserve a modicum of pity, especially if their lives have involved abuse, and betrayals of trust, and an absence of sympathy.
At the very end, when everything appears resolved and the dust starts to settle, there comes a little dialogue between Penny and Davy, indicating that fiction can and should imitate life to elicit our acceptance of the story. Penny has been saying that if things bought on credit hadn’t been insured then the family as buyer still had to pay if the goods had been destroyed or damaged. Davy is outraged:
“That can’t be right. It’s not our fault. It wouldn’t be fair.” — “I don’t know,” said Penny. “It’s a complicated world.”
Complicated indeed, as is this superb but little-known novel.
The Gift is a powerful story for teenage readers from the pen of Peter Dickinson, a novel that works at several levels to appeal to many ages, emotional capacities and intellects. It also crosses the permeable frontiers between fantasy, social realism, and thriller, as well as border-hopping between North Wales and England’s South Midlands.
Davy Price is the youngest in a dysfunctional family, with a father who’s a fly-by-night chancer, a mother who occasionally ‘disappears’ on holiday with male acquaintances, an older brother who’ll become involved with a splinter group of Welsh nationalists, and a sister who doesn’t stand fools gladly but whom Davy values as a confidante.
After one particular familial upheaval the three children get dumped on the father’s mother — the trio’s fierce Welsh granny — and her gentle husband, known as Dadda, on a hill farm near a disused slate quarry. This is when Davy first discovers he has the ‘gift’ of seeing other people’s vision, and learns the legend of how certain generations of the family have it, and how it can in fact be more a curse than otherwise. It will take a major crisis to bring things to a head, and a situation of great danger which may or may not free Davy of his dubious talent.
A few years later, when Davy is 13 or 14, the family finally seems to have settled down in a new-build but still developing town in the Midlands. Though Davy, Penny and Ian’s dad is still wheeler-dealing in the background things are seemingly going well — until Davy starts experiencing unnerving visions whenever he is in a relaxed state. His inner eye is subjected to images from what the individual is seeing but they’re shot through with vivid colours and, when the individual is clearly disturbed, squiggly lines spreading rapidly over the observed scene.
The individual, whom Davy dubs Wolf, is connected to two other people Davy designates Mr Black Hat and Monkey, and soon the youngster realises they’re further connected to his father and the construction site which Davy is studying for a geography project. After further dramas the family return to the isolated Welsh farm for their Christmas holidays, but past events are destined to catch up to them all in a nail-biting conclusion.
I hung on to my copy of this after I first read it three decades ago, realising that although I’d thoroughly enjoyed it I hadn’t really understood its nuances and undercurrents. It’s a dark tale, to be sure, but I knew that Dickinson creates really believable individuals and plonks them into situations which test their imagination, courage and fortitude. What I did lack at the time was a fuller appreciation of its context and its cultural backstory.
In some ways Dickinson’s novel was prescient, to some extent anticipating the activities of Meibion Glyndŵr (the Sons of Glendower) from 1979 in firebombing English holiday homes in Wales, but also reflecting the more paramilitaristic approach of other clandestine groups at the time. Ian’s enthusiastic allegiance to his unaffiliated cell doesn’t extend to a reverence for history, but Davy knows that his gift is due to an incident in the Berwyn mountains, during the guerilla war waged by Owain Glyndŵr for independence in the years around 1400.
Incidentally, Dickinson composed a splendid alliterative “translation” of a Welsh poem about Glyndŵr, to suggest what led to the acquisition of the gift:
"By Maen Mynor stayed Glyn Dwr’s standard.
Galaes his hawk gripped at his gauntlet.
Through the eyes of his hawk he viewed hill and valley.
He saw the Saxons scurry before his soldiers…"
But there are also traditions nearer in time that Dickinson draws into his narrative: the tenuous living to be got by hill farmers; fading memories of a time when Welsh women wore hats “black and tall and pointy, like a witch’s” says Davy, and lace shawls; the knowledge that working the slate quarries was dangerous work, especially when it involved explosives; a sensitivity towards language, and intonation, and poetry.
And through everything Dickinson has a skill of evoking individuals who, however flawed they are — and some are very flawed — deserve a modicum of pity, especially if their lives have involved abuse, and betrayals of trust, and an absence of sympathy.
At the very end, when everything appears resolved and the dust starts to settle, there comes a little dialogue between Penny and Davy, indicating that fiction can and should imitate life to elicit our acceptance of the story. Penny has been saying that if things bought on credit hadn’t been insured then the family as buyer still had to pay if the goods had been destroyed or damaged. Davy is outraged:
“That can’t be right. It’s not our fault. It wouldn’t be fair.” — “I don’t know,” said Penny. “It’s a complicated world.”
Complicated indeed, as is this superb but little-known novel.
February 5, 2022
"The Gift", like "Annerton Pit", with which it shares some thematic similarities, sits somewhere between Dickinson's mysteries and his children's fantasy books. Davy, the protagonist, has inherited the family gift -- or possibly curse, as family legend has it that using it brings bad luck -- which unpredictably shows him other people's thoughts. His limited control over it means that it's more of an annoyance than a benefit, and it becomes downright scary when he starts to pick up the thoughts of someone who is criminally insane. As if this wasn't bad enough, Davy and his older sister Penny find themselves forced to defend the stability of their family against the irresponsibility of their parents, especially their father. (His oldest brother, Ian, has cut ties with their father and joined up with some Welsh nationalist revolutionaries, which turns out to matter because the origin of the gift lies in the conquest of Wales by the English.) Naturally, Davy's telepathic discoveries turn out to be connected to his father's latest hare-brained scheme, which threatens to tear the family apart for good. Dickinson expertly weaves together the quasi-mystery and the family drama, along with a steady dose of menace from the thoughts of the madman, leading to a fairly harrowing final confrontation. "The Gift" doesn't quite have the depth of his best mysteries, but its idea of telepathy is clever, the family dynamics are done very well, and once the plot starts moving it doesn't stop. Like almost everything Dickinson ever wrote, this is highly recommended.
September 14, 2022
Read this as a tween/young teen and it's stuck in my mind as a good creepy middle grade story.
March 21, 2025
Very good, a little dated but great suspense at the end
September 27, 2013
I read this book at school in the early eighties. I had despaired of ever finding any details as of course I had forgotten the author and a google search of 'the gift' a novel or even amazon was hopeless in the thousands of results produced. The impression the story made stayed with me quite clearly over the last thirty odd years. Thank you goodreads, one happy customer.
October 18, 2022
His gift was eratic and so was the book in my opinion? I had to finish it as I hoped the ending would be its saving grace but no. I couldn't wait to finish it and move on.
January 16, 2025
Difficult to follow. Lots of time jumps
November 14, 2025
Davy is a boy with telepathic abilities who finds out his father is in trouble. As an eleven year old child I liked this children's book. Simple, easy to read and enjoyable.
June 5, 2016
The title and cover of this book are a little misleading because one instantly thinks that the book is going to be a heavily fantasy-based book, but once you get into it you discover it is more about growing up in a time where parents didn't always stick around and you go shoved off on family members (yes this happens today as well, but as I understand it even more frequently because parents would shove kids on grandparents then come back and then do it again.)
When you read this book you discover pretty quickly that it is a children's novel about a boy growing up in a dysfunction family and the boy has a rare gift, the ability to read into people's minds. This ability is described to him by his grandmother as being the cause of grief for his family. The gift doesn't appear as prominent as one would think though. It appears only sporadically throughout the book and the focus tends to be more on the people that he interacts with.
One of the largest components of this story is the fact that his dad frequently moves the family and that they all really want to settle down finally, except for perhaps the father which is explained in the book. This causes the father to take part of a rather large plot that is the main story of the book, which I won't go into details as you should pick up the book and give it a chance for yourself.
For me I enjoyed going in expecting one thing from this story and discovering it was more of a down-home charmed type of book instead. I enjoy when a book doesn't meet my expectations, but at the same time exceeds them because it does something better. Here it definitely fit the better category because I felt like I saw how someone of a different time period would have grown up. It wasn't high-brow literature by any means, but it was interesting to see the dynamics of each family member play out. My favorite relationship has to be between the main character and his grandmother. This relationship seems a bit stilted until you understand the story that she has been holding back. She has a reason to be hard-edged and you understand everything that makes their relationship what it is. Families didn't always look like what we have today with the running around to soccer games, meeting appointments, and etc. This book really reflects that, in my humble opinion.
Overall I recommend reading "The Gift" by Peter Dickinson and finding a simpler time. It got deducted one Faerie Point because there are times where you will feel like, "Does this story have a point?", but it still keeps a certain bit of charm the entire time thus making it a great read for a lazy afternoon.
When you read this book you discover pretty quickly that it is a children's novel about a boy growing up in a dysfunction family and the boy has a rare gift, the ability to read into people's minds. This ability is described to him by his grandmother as being the cause of grief for his family. The gift doesn't appear as prominent as one would think though. It appears only sporadically throughout the book and the focus tends to be more on the people that he interacts with.
One of the largest components of this story is the fact that his dad frequently moves the family and that they all really want to settle down finally, except for perhaps the father which is explained in the book. This causes the father to take part of a rather large plot that is the main story of the book, which I won't go into details as you should pick up the book and give it a chance for yourself.
For me I enjoyed going in expecting one thing from this story and discovering it was more of a down-home charmed type of book instead. I enjoy when a book doesn't meet my expectations, but at the same time exceeds them because it does something better. Here it definitely fit the better category because I felt like I saw how someone of a different time period would have grown up. It wasn't high-brow literature by any means, but it was interesting to see the dynamics of each family member play out. My favorite relationship has to be between the main character and his grandmother. This relationship seems a bit stilted until you understand the story that she has been holding back. She has a reason to be hard-edged and you understand everything that makes their relationship what it is. Families didn't always look like what we have today with the running around to soccer games, meeting appointments, and etc. This book really reflects that, in my humble opinion.
Overall I recommend reading "The Gift" by Peter Dickinson and finding a simpler time. It got deducted one Faerie Point because there are times where you will feel like, "Does this story have a point?", but it still keeps a certain bit of charm the entire time thus making it a great read for a lazy afternoon.
September 11, 2011
I read The Gift while in high school.
The paperback back cover said Davy Price, a boy with erratic telepathic powers, finds himself in touch with the mind of a violent criminal, with whom his irresponsible father is also somehow involved. Originally published in 1973, this thrilling tale is from the writer whom Philip Pullman calls "one of the real masters of children’s literature."
The paperback back cover said Davy Price, a boy with erratic telepathic powers, finds himself in touch with the mind of a violent criminal, with whom his irresponsible father is also somehow involved. Originally published in 1973, this thrilling tale is from the writer whom Philip Pullman calls "one of the real masters of children’s literature."
January 19, 2016
This was okay. It wasn't very fast paced or exciting, but it wasn't too long either. Interesting concept, just not as exciting as I would have liked.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews