Communion <\/p>\n
Author: Jon Doyle<\/p>\n
ISBN-13: 9781805465133<\/p>\n
Publisher: Atlantic Books <\/p>\n
Guideline Price: \u00a317.99<\/p>\n
There is so much to admire about this book. For one thing, I can\u2019t remember the last time I picked up a novel with such unusual subject matter. There aren\u2019t even star-crossed lovers \u2013 or, well, yes, all right, there are star-crossed lovers, but they\u2019re not the typical sort, and nothing about them is romantic. Rather, they\u2019re troubled odd-bods in the form of a failed priest and a reclusive eccentric. <\/p>\n
The setting is a Welsh mining town that\u2019s seen better days, the situation that of a miners\u2019 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<\/a> and that the enormous production really did take place as The Passion of Port Talbot, back in 2011. The premise is Tarantino<\/a>-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.<\/p>\n There is also Doyle\u2019s 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 \u201cfoam lining the sides like a caul\u201d. Small details such as the background sound of \u201ca slop of water\u201d from the washing machine or \u201cthe middle colon blinking\u201d on a wrong cooker clock put me in mind, again, of filmmakers more than novelists \u2013 here, Karel Reisz or Ken Loach. I was transported at times to rooms from my childhood, no small feat.<\/p>\n Alas, I\u2019m not sure it would be accurate to call the novel a success. There\u2019s a confusing, meandering quality, and a subtlety in terms of what\u2019s actually happening that proved too subtle for me. It\u2019s possible I didn\u2019t have the interpretive capacity to follow, or it could be, to continue using film as my touchpoint, an unfortunate case of the Christopher Nolan<\/a>s. <\/p>\n 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\u2019s much to commend here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Communion Author: Jon Doyle ISBN-13: 9781805465133 Publisher: Atlantic Books Guideline Price: \u00a317.99 There is so much to admire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6489,50678,61,60,170058,69612,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-381090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-book-reviews","9":"tag-christopher-nolan","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-michael-sheen","13":"tag-quentin-tarantino","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}