All Our Hidden Gifts
We are so pleased to bring you an interview with Caroline O’Donoghue, author of All Our Hidden Gifts.
What made you decide to write a book for young adults following the success of Promising Young Women and Scenes of a Graphic Nature?
It was always my plan to write Young Adult eventually. When I first met my agent back in 2015, I had two things in my draft folder: one was an adult novel about an agony aunt, and the other was a YA my friend and I were writing about a kind of magical Tudor court. She said that YA was a tough market to break into, and that historical YA in particular was a risky venture. So I worked on the adult novel, and carved out a career for myself there. Years later, she said “I think it’s time for you to revisit YA – I think you have what it takes to be a big voice in that arena.” I didn’t need much encouragement after that. I had 20,000 words of All Our Hidden Gifts to her a month later.
Can you describe All Our Hidden gifts in one sentence?
You know when having a fight with your best friend feels like the end of the world? In this book, it is.
Where did you get your inspiration for the story?
The inspiration came from a lot of different places. I was spending a lot of time at home in Cork following my older sister’s diagnosis with breast cancer. Suddenly, I was walking the streets of my home city all day, feeling like I was sixteen again. I began to realise that I wanted to write a book about the Ireland I grew up in: one that’s grungy and creative and urban, with this throbbing heartbeat of old Ireland and old tradition underneath it. I come from a big family, and we were all back in the house again because of my sister’s illness. I think that comes through in the novel – the days following Lily’s disappearance where everything is at a standstill, and yet life seems to keep happening anyway.
You say this is one of the most personal books you have ever written. Are there parallels between your time as a teen and Maeve’s?
I was always torn between wanting to be fiercely individual and wanting to just be popular. I think that struggle is pretty intense for most teens. Particularly as a young teenager, I really hated the whole thing of just hanging around in big groups, waiting for boys to show up while you froze to death outside a corner shop somewhere. I felt like I was always saying stupid things to be funny, and sometimes people laughed, and sometimes they thought I was either too mean or too weird. It didn’t help that my older brother was so popular, so I constantly had someone to compare my social agony too. I think those things inspired a lot of Maeve’s behaviour, and why she does the thing she does.
What do you hope readers will take away from reading All Our Hidden Gifts?
That most of the horrible things people do happen because they don’t like themselves
Friendship is an important theme in the book – what is it about friendship that you wanted to explore in All Our Hidden Gifts?
I really wanted to explore the concept of ‘the weird friend’ – the person who you have a fascinating connection and amazing chemistry with, almost to the point where it feels like a romance, but who other people think is weird. Not cute-weird, but like, genuinely odd. I think those connections are some of the most impactful we make in our entire lives, and peer groups can be so cruel that they can threaten to destroy them. To me, there’s no bigger Romeo & Juliet story than two girls torn apart by the cliques of an all-girls school.
Where did the idea of the House Keeper card come from? Do you practice tarot yourself?
Years ago, I was in a band called Greyhounds Greyhounds Greyhounds, and my friend Harry Harris and I used to meet up once a week to write songs together. The two words came to me while I was waiting for a train – just the term ‘Housekeeper Card’ – and I wrote them in my notes app. That week, when we were looking for song ideas, I came across the note and just said: “I have this thing called the Housekeeper Card. I don’t know what it is.” Together we made up the lore and the original song lyrics appear in the book.
I do practice tarot. Honestly, I used to practice it much more before writing AOHG – now I think about tarot so much for work, I hardly do it for fun anymore!
Tell us more about the allyship, activism and LGBTQ+ representation in the story and its importance to you?
From the beginning, I felt very strongly that I didn’t want to tell a magic story that was all-white, fully heterosexual or completely cis-focused. I think a lot of teen witch stories are told through this lens, and it feels dishonest to me. ‘Magic’ at its most everyday level tends to be practiced by queer people, people of colour, or other minority groups. This is not a coincidence. These are the groups that are most vulnerable to violence, the most underserved by public services, the least protected by social infrastructure. People turn to magic because it is a cheap and homespun way of feeling in control.
Once I had established this fact of the AOHG world, I needed there to be real villainy, something beyond the Housekeeper taking Lily. I thought very strategically about this: what would a spell that big do to the magical threads of their world? How would it manifest on a literal level? What is the opposite of magic? That one is easy: the opposite of magic is organised religion. The rest of the plot stemmed from there.
There have been so many amazing queer and diverse love stories in YA lately, I also wanted to offer a story about allyship, and about doing your best when you don’t always know how.
What does magic mean to you?
To me magic is a different way of seeing the world. It’s about seeing the potential in things, the lushness of your surroundings and the good in people. It’s about being connected, and connective.
Who are your favourite YA authors/novels?
Diana Wynne Jones, Margaret Mahy, Leigh Bardugo.
What can we can we expect from Book 2?
Book 2 is Maeve, Roe, Fiona and Lily dealing with the aftermath of the ritual and the weight of their new gifts. The girls are in their final year of school, and Roe is in college, so Maeve is worrying whether she’s on the brink of losing them. At the same time, St Bernadette’s is beginning to change, the Children of Brigid are more popular than ever – and they have an offer for Maeve.
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