Communion

Author: Jon Doyle

ISBN-13: 9781805465133

Publisher: Atlantic Books

Guideline Price: £17.99

There is so much to admire about this book. For one thing, I can’t remember the last time I picked up a novel with such unusual subject matter. There aren’t even star-crossed lovers – or, well, yes, all right, there are star-crossed lovers, but they’re not the typical sort, and nothing about them is romantic. Rather, they’re troubled odd-bods in the form of a failed priest and a reclusive eccentric.

The setting is a Welsh mining town that’s seen better days, the situation that of a miners’ strike coinciding with a street performance of The Passion, starring a big Hollywood actor. Of course, most people reading will know that this actor is Michael Sheen and that the enormous production really did take place as The Passion of Port Talbot, back in 2011. The premise is Tarantino-esque, in that the author poses the question; but what if this had happened, instead of that? Which all makes for a very interesting, wondrously bizarre set-up.

There is also Doyle’s exquisite way with words, his mastery of the small details that place you in the setting. He has a genuinely idiosyncratic way of describing the everyday without that usual agonised striving for originality. A downed pint leaves “foam lining the sides like a caul”. Small details such as the background sound of “a slop of water” from the washing machine or “the middle colon blinking” on a wrong cooker clock put me in mind, again, of filmmakers more than novelists – here, Karel Reisz or Ken Loach. I was transported at times to rooms from my childhood, no small feat.

Alas, I’m not sure it would be accurate to call the novel a success. There’s a confusing, meandering quality, and a subtlety in terms of what’s actually happening that proved too subtle for me. It’s possible I didn’t have the interpretive capacity to follow, or it could be, to continue using film as my touchpoint, an unfortunate case of the Christopher Nolans.

I got the impression that Doyle may have spent months and years refining the concept and opening of the book and then, perhaps feeling pressure to finish, somewhat rushed the conclusion. But this is just conjecture and, as I say, for language and novelty alone, there’s much to commend here.