Caroline O'Donoghue's The Gifts That Bind Us

February 15th 2022

Caroline O'Donoghue is an Irish author, journalist and the host of the award-winning Sentimental Garbage podcast. She writes popular fiction books for young adults and books for teenagers, and the second book in her Gifts series for teenagers, The Gifts That Bind Us, is out now from Walker Books.

Q: How do you hope schools and libraries will engage with The Gifts That Bind Us?

 
What I love about taking the Gifts books to schools and libraries is that it gives everyone a really fun opportunity to get involved with the tarot. It’s such a fun storytelling device, and I’ve found that students really respond to the cards when they’re in front of them. We build stories together using the cards, just by responding to the images and making stuff up as we go along. Teenagers often get really embarrassed by using their imaginations, especially in public, but the visual aids of the tarot in these books for teenagers help a lot.

Q: Maeve, Lily, Fiona and Roe all have different kinds of magic. Which type of magic would you choose for yourself?

I would take Roe’s magic: the power of being able to talk to machines. I am so bad at tech, and I can’t drive – I’ve just got my provisional licence and I’m building up the courage to finally get lessons this year. I’m 31, by the way.

Q: Did you draw on any of your own experiences as a teenager growing up in Ireland when writing All Our Hidden Gifts and The Gifts That Bind Us?

All Our Hidden Gifts drew heavily on the kind of person I was when I was 16: silly but serious, funny but prone to long bouts of isolation, and constantly in the shadow of my elder siblings. I was also terrible in school, which is a trait Maeve and I share. For The Gifts That Bind Us I drew more on individual moments that felt significant or stressful about my own adolescence. The anxiety of your final year of school, especially when you feel like everyone else is destined for great things while you can’t even imagine going to university. But I also drew on the more joyful moments, like the freedom that comes when someone in your clique finally has a car, of going to gigs and clubs, or just the liberation of really getting away from your family home for extended periods of time.

Q: What message are you hoping to pass on to the teens of today with this new young adult fiction book?

At its core, I think that the Gifts series is about forgiveness. Maeve has to forgive herself for the things she’s done to Lily, Lily has to forgive Maeve for “rescuing” her (although that’s not the way Lily sees it) and there are several other moments where characters are pushed to forgive things that they would have previously thought unthinkable. I’m interested in the conversation it provokes around this theme. I think as a society we have become very keen on judgement and punishment, and not so much about rehabilitation. I think a lot of young people are deeply frightened of getting things wrong, and I think there should be more reminders that adolescence is a time that is pretty much designed so that you can make mistakes and grow from them.

The Gifts That Bind Us is out now.