All Our Hidden Gifts

It all begins with Maeve Chambers chucking her shoe at a teacher – he’d called her stupid for not knowing her Italian verbs. She gets four hours of detention, cleaning out smelly storage rooms in the school basement. Almost 400 pages later, the novel moves towards its end with a chanted ritual spell, knife wounds, three central characters all in hospital, Spring-time and a reunion (of sorts). St Bernadette’s is a Catholic all-girls private school in Ireland, housing 400 students. Maeve’s four older siblings were bright enough to make it through state schools unaided; but she’s always struggled which is why, despite the hefty fees, her parents have sent her to St Bernadette’s. She’s all too aware of her place in the family ranking order: “I’m not dyslexic, or blind, or deaf. Unfortunately for everyone, I’m just thick”. Of course, she isn’t; and as the story unfolds, she comes to see that she does indeed own the ‘hidden gifts’ of the title.

It’s when she’s sorting out the Chokey, a long, deep cupboard in the basement, that she finds the tarot cards. Or, possibly, they find her. She soon discovers, with a little help from a tarot expert on You-Tube, that she has an uncanny understanding of what the cards reveal for her classmates. She’s suddenly in demand, treated with respect. Through the cards, she makes a friend in Fiona, herself an outsider, though in her case it’s her preoccupation with her Saturday stage school, her friends there, and her ambition to work in theatre which set her apart. That and her family’s Filipino origins. Fiona prompts Maeve to set up a profitable lunchtime business; two euros for ten minutes with the cards.

Friendship is a problem for Maeve. Lily had been her best friend since primary school and she’s still around in the same year as Maeve at St. Bernadette’s. They are sixteen now and in Maeve’s attempts to get in with a particular clique, Lily had been an embarrassment. One day, Maeve cruelly dumped Lily, and now when Lily asks for a tarot reading, that episode flares up again in front of everyone. The next day, Lily disappears. Maeve, Fiona, the absent Lily and Lily’s older brother Rory (who prefers to be known as Roe) comprise the central cast of the novel. Other adult characters play important, but brief roles, such as the proprietor of a crystals shop dealing in all things magical, or an American guy who leads an aggressively fundamentalist protest group. But it’s the interplay between Maeve, Fiona and Roe (whom Maeve finds increasingly attractive), as they urgently try to track down Lily, that drives the story.

The intensity of O’Donoghue’s writing is relentless, not least in her accounts of the dark, sharp-edged dreams which haunt both Maeve and Rory – at times, they even seem to have access to the other’s dream life. The cards appear and disappear, out of Maeve’s control. Sometimes an extra card (not in the standard pack) turns up, named The Housekeeper, which Maeve senses is powerfully malign in its intent; The Housekeeper may well be a fatal threat to Lily, wherever she is hidden.

The narrative is so taut and twisting that it will demand the full concentration of an able reader. Towards its end, Maeve realises that she is a ‘sensitive’ with the ability to cast spells; and that if she is to bring Lily back, she must use her powers, even though they carry huge responsibility and might well have fatal consequences for herself. All of this is only occasionally relieved by moments of humour within the dialogue; and while the feelings of Maeve and Rory for each other are described with tenderness, the course of their love does not run smooth given the supernatural pressures upon them – and, for good measure, the added dimension of Rory’s bi-sexuality.

The finale does not compromise; no easy endings here.