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Communion
You didn't go to the seminary to become a priest, the rector had explained on their first morning. You went to learn what God was asking of you.
When Mack O'Brien left his home in Port Talbot for the seminary as a teenager, he didn't imagine he'd be back a decade later, unordained and at war with his faith. Back in his childhood bedroom, he remains committed to the idea of a moral life, but isn't entirely sure what that looks like.
He takes a job as a security guard at the local steelworks and begins an uneasy transition into the world of industry, brotherhood, and community he once rejected. When the men of the steelworks organise an unprecedented strike in protest against job cuts, he goes along with it. Meanwhile, his mother watches footage of past catastrophes and prays for the dead.
The last person Mack expects to see in the local club is Siwan Roderick - the woman who appeared out of the blue at the seminary one day to make a confession and swore him to secrecy. Mack kept his word. But as the day of the strike nears, tensions in the town escalate and allegiances are tested. Mack's loyalty to Siwan and his desperation to do the right thing will change both of their lives forever.
When Mack O'Brien left his home in Port Talbot for the seminary as a teenager, he didn't imagine he'd be back a decade later, unordained and at war with his faith. Back in his childhood bedroom, he remains committed to the idea of a moral life, but isn't entirely sure what that looks like.
He takes a job as a security guard at the local steelworks and begins an uneasy transition into the world of industry, brotherhood, and community he once rejected. When the men of the steelworks organise an unprecedented strike in protest against job cuts, he goes along with it. Meanwhile, his mother watches footage of past catastrophes and prays for the dead.
The last person Mack expects to see in the local club is Siwan Roderick - the woman who appeared out of the blue at the seminary one day to make a confession and swore him to secrecy. Mack kept his word. But as the day of the strike nears, tensions in the town escalate and allegiances are tested. Mack's loyalty to Siwan and his desperation to do the right thing will change both of their lives forever.
265 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 2, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Jon Doyle's superb debut novel, Communion, takes us to the industrial landscape of South Wales and the Port Talbot steelworks, where Mack O'Brien, recently returned from his time in a seminary, adjusts to life outside of religious enclosure and finds a different brotherhood with the men of the steelworks.
As his relationships with his co-workers, especially with a fellow security guard and with local woman Siwan, develop, Mack O'Brian finds his certainties in the world challenged.
There is a quiet beauty to Communion, a hauntingly beautiful restraint, and out of his themes, Jon Doyle is able to create comparisons between two worlds, and show in sharp detail the life of a man trying to find meaning and purpose in the world.
I highly recommend Communion, and it is one of my highlights for 2026 already, and one I will be foisting on friends. So thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
As his relationships with his co-workers, especially with a fellow security guard and with local woman Siwan, develop, Mack O'Brian finds his certainties in the world challenged.
There is a quiet beauty to Communion, a hauntingly beautiful restraint, and out of his themes, Jon Doyle is able to create comparisons between two worlds, and show in sharp detail the life of a man trying to find meaning and purpose in the world.
I highly recommend Communion, and it is one of my highlights for 2026 already, and one I will be foisting on friends. So thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
April 26, 2026
I think there should be many more ambitious and outward-looking books like this but…perhaps more readable and better constructed ones? I started this and then listened to an interview with the author and the clarity of his intentions came across, so I dunno…just a technique issue, I guess.
There was so much going on plot-wise. I think perhaps this would have been fine if the writing really worked. There were certainly flashes of fine prose but the third-person narrative voice was all over the place and the characterisation was one-note.
I didn’t believe in a single person, particularly the two central characters. Everyone in it had a single function, a bit like in the performance of the Passion that threads through the novel. Sirwan was a joke - she had a mother in ELF (ecotage group, ‘eco-terrorism’ is a loaded word) but we learn absolutely nothing about their relationshop and have to assume a taste for blowing up things gets passed on like a wonky nose or flat feet.
I felt like the writer really hamstrung himself with the injunction ‘show, don’t tell’ at certain points. He used very precise language but it really felt like being cornered by a pub bore. At the same time, any propulsion or immediacy was ruined by the weird plotting.
Like I said, there were moments of great writing. I can see the good book in this although it looks v different from the one we’ve got.
This is a really mean review - I want more books like this but better! YMMV.
There was so much going on plot-wise. I think perhaps this would have been fine if the writing really worked. There were certainly flashes of fine prose but the third-person narrative voice was all over the place and the characterisation was one-note.
I didn’t believe in a single person, particularly the two central characters. Everyone in it had a single function, a bit like in the performance of the Passion that threads through the novel. Sirwan was a joke - she had a mother in ELF (ecotage group, ‘eco-terrorism’ is a loaded word) but we learn absolutely nothing about their relationshop and have to assume a taste for blowing up things gets passed on like a wonky nose or flat feet.
I felt like the writer really hamstrung himself with the injunction ‘show, don’t tell’ at certain points. He used very precise language but it really felt like being cornered by a pub bore. At the same time, any propulsion or immediacy was ruined by the weird plotting.
Like I said, there were moments of great writing. I can see the good book in this although it looks v different from the one we’ve got.
This is a really mean review - I want more books like this but better! YMMV.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 4, 2026
Loved this book, read like a noir at times and the fact it was set in Port Talbot was perfect
I get so sad driving past the steelworks since it shutdown, this book reflects the real sense of community and all the good and bad things that come with being part of a tight knit town
Great debut
I get so sad driving past the steelworks since it shutdown, this book reflects the real sense of community and all the good and bad things that come with being part of a tight knit town
Great debut
April 26, 2026
The journey of a man pushed out from seminary returning to his home, but of course you can never really return home. The frozen images of his mother, his girlfriend, his father and fellow steelworkers, and the town priest, all who continued living during his departure, have turned into real persons, with frailties, shame, and private failures shaped by their own paths. All as he searches for what’s left that he can believe in.
“I used to pray for a Game Boy . . . when I was a kid . . . . Then Mam told me God don’t work like that, so I stole one from the girl next-door and prayed for forgiveness instead.”
“I used to pray for a Game Boy . . . when I was a kid . . . . Then Mam told me God don’t work like that, so I stole one from the girl next-door and prayed for forgiveness instead.”
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
He was never quite sure he was the sort of man to become a priest in any case. Feared he lacked the depth of mind. Prayed right enough but never thought to expect an answer. Catholicism was more like a cadence running through his head. But there was attraction in that way of living. The shelter of a life portioned up according to ancient rites. And nothing was ever set in stone, as Canon Sylvester always reminded him. He could follow the path with curiosity and wait for God to provide a sign. In the months before he left, he read everything the canon gave him. Made diligent notes regardless of how much he understood. He did this alone and with great seriousness. Organised his days into blocks of time in his room with nothing but paper and a pen. He prayed every night. Hail Marys, Glory Bes. The Lord’s Prayer and a period of silent contemplation. Devotion as a state of quietness. An open receptivity.
This book featured in the 2026 version of the influential and frequently literary-prize-prescient annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature.
Interestingly it is one of the top books on the eight strong list to centre in effect a Catholic Priest and in a way very different to is typical in say Irish literary fiction where Catholic Priests or Nuns are portrayed as part of an oppressive/abusive/backward looking society (as one novel recorded it in effect moving the colonisation of Ireland from England to Rome) – here instead featuring men struggling to reconcile the strict demands of priesthood with their personal convictions and passions.
Here the close third party narrator is Mack (Cormac O’Brien) – who some years before the novel’s setting in Holy Week 2011 in Wales’s steel-plant industrial town of Port Talbot (famously and crucially the crucible for three famous actors – Anthony Hopkins, Richard Burton and featuring as an unnamed character in the novel Michael Sheen) – as a teenager went to a nearby seminary for a decade or so to train as a Catholic Priest rather to the bafflement of his steelworker father Jackie and the quiet pride of his mother.
However things at the seminary did not work out – Mack’s increasing focus on faith-driven activism causes the seminary authorities to question the motivations for his calling – and now he is back and has taken a job as a security guard at the steel plant. And the week itself is a momentous one – the famous actor is staging an interactive Passion play as an interactive community event (as did actually occur) and this also coincides with a strike at the plant to protest against the overseas owners plans to make the production more environmentally but less employment friendly (these actions did and still are occurring although I don’t think there was a strike that weekend – more that the play itself told the Gospel story as one where the Romans were in effect the overseas plant owners).
Mack has an unclear involvement in both – a reluctant (and inconsistent) apostle in the play co-opted by his father, and under conflicting pressure from the steelworkers and from his employer (and fellow security guards tempted by a bribe of extra pay – thirty pieces of silver perhaps) as to whether to join the strike.
In a further piece of narrative action – perhaps the most impactful for Mack – shortly before he quit the seminary he was visited by Siwan. He and Siwan had an odd relationship as children – subject to weekly trips to the town’s cinema, and arrangement connected (in ways the young Mack never quite worked out) with some issue with Siwan’s Mum (perhaps only now realising it was effectively his mother offering a childcaring break). In the seminary however Siwan wants to confess to him – but an odd confession with he not yet (or likely to become) a priest and she confessing to something she is about to do ……. Mack then finding in another conflict as to what to do with the information given he feels, despite his lack of vows, bound by a seal of silence. And this week Siwan re-appears and Mack finds himself even more implicated in her proposed action.
And there are many other strands to the novel: the local Priest is about to retire with ill-health, a retirement that he had always assumed would have a readymade replacement in the newly ordained Mack, and the Priest seems to be closer to Siwan and possibly her actions than Mack would expect; Mack and Siwan find themselves drawn back to the now boarded up and derelict cinema – the only real place they historically encountered each other; Mack’s mother prays for souls in purgatory – but not friends or fellow congregants but for example 9-11 victims – watching videos obsessively; Mack has some odd encounters – one with a man apparently contemplating suicide, a closing one with a man dressed as a Roman Centurion who may or may not be a very convincing extra from the passion play – and against all of this the strike, the passion play (scenes of which we glimpse or are immersed in) and the church events of Holy Week play out.
This is not a novel for those who want clear answers and plot resolutions – little is spelt out (the seal of silence Mack took giving I think an excellent literary motivation for why we never hear what Siwan confessed to him albeit we can work it out) and the novel ends with more of a sense of mystery than closure.
It is instead one for those who want intelligent examination of ambiguous themes: what does it mean to have to live under expectations (of carrying on the traditions of a working class industrial community or the even more ancient traditions of the Catholic church) – and (linking to the play) what roles and parts are we required to play; how does one reconcile the strictures of institutional faith with the apparent activism of the Gospels; how does the free market interact with community cohesion and in particularly how are the livelihoods of working class industrial communities reconciled with environmentalism (some of the discussions here resonate even more strongly today) – or in other words how can the traditions of the past be reconciled with the emergencies of the future (which again links to the way in which the Passion play is retold as well as to Mack’s seminary struggles).
Returning to my introductory remark I will be interested to see how literary fiction readers react to the faith aspect – one of the various aspects of the relatively narrow world view of such readers (and the editing/writing community) is view to Western religion somewhere between antipathy and apathy – to perhaps put it another way their catholic tastes do not typically extend to Catholicism. However – this year a Booker judge famously wrote a memoir about her married Catholic Priest father (and someone who has written on the origins of Christianity as an institutional Roman religion) – so this novel has to be in strong Booker contention and would I think be a fascinating inclusion.
My thanks to Atlantic Books for an ARC via NetGalley
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Jon Doyle’s debut novel Communion is set in the southern Welsh town of Port Talbot in the recent past. It opens with the protagonist, Cormac “Mack” O’Brien, out drinking with his ageing father and a group of current or retired workers from the steel plant that dominates the town’s economy. “Fitting in with the boys” does not come easily to Mack. He has just spent several years at the seminary training to become a priest, but his activism and questioning faith did not sit well with his superiors, who effectively sent him away. He has now taken a job as a security guard at the steelworks – and indeed, where else could he find work in Port Talbot, where life revolves around the steel industry?
Trouble, however, is brewing. The unions are increasingly at odds with management and are planning strike action. An upcoming community passion play scheduled for Holy Week, featuring a famous Hollywood actor from Port Talbot, might offer the unions an opportunity to broadcast their message to a wider audience.
Mack, still finding his feet in the outside world, faces further unexpected moral crises when he reconnects with a childhood friend, Siwan Roderick. Just before he left the seminary, Siwan visited Mack and made a confession to him, binding him to secrecy. Although, as Mack repeatedly points out, he was not ordained and therefore was not technically bound by the seal of confession, he honours the promise. Yet this vow, coupled with his renewed involvement with Siwan, forces him into a series of difficult and consequential decisions.
Communion was one of the first novels I read this year, and will likely prove to be among the best. It is a realist working-class novel, rooted in the heat, sweat, toil and grime of the steel industry. Small wonder that in 2023, then a novel-in-progress provisionally titled "Tenebrae", it won the Writers & Artists Working Class Writer’s Prize. The novel draws much of its authenticity from the author’s own background as a (Catholic) son of Port Talbot: two generations of Doyle’s family worked at the steelworks, while the passion play at the centre of the narrative is inspired by a real-life event, Michael Sheen’s 2011 production The Passion of Port Talbot.
Yet Communion is also a deeply philosophical novel that asks searching questions about community, faith and social expectations. What does it mean to be called to the ministry? Are religion and social activism complementary or fundamentally at odds? And does priesthood require a renunciation of masculinity?
This tension between the worldly and the Godly, the secular and the religious, the material and the spiritual, is reflected in the novel’s style. Doyle adopts a close third-person perspective centred on Mack, conveyed through pared-down, direct and matter-of-fact prose that suits the novel’s social realism. At the same time, the narrative is punctuated by moments that invite a more symbolic or mystical reading, at times edging towards magical realism. One thinks, for instance, of Mack’s conversation with a would-be suicide tied to a railway track; of his mother rewatching videos of past tragedies while praying for the victims’ souls; or of the final scene, in which Mack, dressed in priestly robes, encounters a centurion on the beach – who may, or may not, simply be a participant in the passion play. I was also struck by the description of the Good Friday ceremony attended by Mack and Siwan: the religious atmosphere is conveyed not, as one might expect, through lush or opulent imagery, but through the same restrained, minimalist prose that Doyle employs throughout the novel.
Doyle also maintains a firm grip on the plot. The secret at the heart of the novel is never explicitly revealed, although by the end we have a fairly clear sense of what it might be, and this withheld revelation lends the story a certain narrative tension, at times giving it the feel of a thriller.
This is an impressive debut.
https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...
Trouble, however, is brewing. The unions are increasingly at odds with management and are planning strike action. An upcoming community passion play scheduled for Holy Week, featuring a famous Hollywood actor from Port Talbot, might offer the unions an opportunity to broadcast their message to a wider audience.
Mack, still finding his feet in the outside world, faces further unexpected moral crises when he reconnects with a childhood friend, Siwan Roderick. Just before he left the seminary, Siwan visited Mack and made a confession to him, binding him to secrecy. Although, as Mack repeatedly points out, he was not ordained and therefore was not technically bound by the seal of confession, he honours the promise. Yet this vow, coupled with his renewed involvement with Siwan, forces him into a series of difficult and consequential decisions.
Communion was one of the first novels I read this year, and will likely prove to be among the best. It is a realist working-class novel, rooted in the heat, sweat, toil and grime of the steel industry. Small wonder that in 2023, then a novel-in-progress provisionally titled "Tenebrae", it won the Writers & Artists Working Class Writer’s Prize. The novel draws much of its authenticity from the author’s own background as a (Catholic) son of Port Talbot: two generations of Doyle’s family worked at the steelworks, while the passion play at the centre of the narrative is inspired by a real-life event, Michael Sheen’s 2011 production The Passion of Port Talbot.
Yet Communion is also a deeply philosophical novel that asks searching questions about community, faith and social expectations. What does it mean to be called to the ministry? Are religion and social activism complementary or fundamentally at odds? And does priesthood require a renunciation of masculinity?
This tension between the worldly and the Godly, the secular and the religious, the material and the spiritual, is reflected in the novel’s style. Doyle adopts a close third-person perspective centred on Mack, conveyed through pared-down, direct and matter-of-fact prose that suits the novel’s social realism. At the same time, the narrative is punctuated by moments that invite a more symbolic or mystical reading, at times edging towards magical realism. One thinks, for instance, of Mack’s conversation with a would-be suicide tied to a railway track; of his mother rewatching videos of past tragedies while praying for the victims’ souls; or of the final scene, in which Mack, dressed in priestly robes, encounters a centurion on the beach – who may, or may not, simply be a participant in the passion play. I was also struck by the description of the Good Friday ceremony attended by Mack and Siwan: the religious atmosphere is conveyed not, as one might expect, through lush or opulent imagery, but through the same restrained, minimalist prose that Doyle employs throughout the novel.
Doyle also maintains a firm grip on the plot. The secret at the heart of the novel is never explicitly revealed, although by the end we have a fairly clear sense of what it might be, and this withheld revelation lends the story a certain narrative tension, at times giving it the feel of a thriller.
This is an impressive debut.
https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...
May 12, 2026
This is a deeply prescient debut which tells a compelling story about faith in a modern world. Tackling class, masculinity, loss and the climate crisis.
The story charts the course of an Easter weekend where an immersive Passion play takes over the town of Port Talbot (which did happen irl with Michael Sheen) and the workers plan to stage a strike alongside the weekend in protest of plans to shut the blast furnaces and transfer over to the more environmentally sustainable Electric Arc but at the cost of thousands of jobs. The blast furnaces closed a couple of years ago so this novel feels poignant in its timing.
Mack - who returns to his home town of Port Talbot - after his attempt to train as a priest doesn’t work out. He struggles to find true connection amongst the community of workers he has long been separated from but also feels a close sense of solidarity with them. We find that his separation from the church comes from a frustration with their theoretical approach to Christ’s doctrine rather than practical, justice-focussed action.
As all these factors push and pull, Mack finds himself reconnecting with a former childhood friend/ quasi sweetheart who is an environmental activist and it’s hinted at throughout the text that she looks to take direct action to further her cause.
In the book - work and action is a form of deliverance and faith throughout and it is the uniting force behind all the characters. The reserved but elegant writing style makes it difficult to read at first but it’s worth sticking with because it creates beautiful and philosophical layers. An impressive debut that provides much to think of.
The story charts the course of an Easter weekend where an immersive Passion play takes over the town of Port Talbot (which did happen irl with Michael Sheen) and the workers plan to stage a strike alongside the weekend in protest of plans to shut the blast furnaces and transfer over to the more environmentally sustainable Electric Arc but at the cost of thousands of jobs. The blast furnaces closed a couple of years ago so this novel feels poignant in its timing.
Mack - who returns to his home town of Port Talbot - after his attempt to train as a priest doesn’t work out. He struggles to find true connection amongst the community of workers he has long been separated from but also feels a close sense of solidarity with them. We find that his separation from the church comes from a frustration with their theoretical approach to Christ’s doctrine rather than practical, justice-focussed action.
As all these factors push and pull, Mack finds himself reconnecting with a former childhood friend/ quasi sweetheart who is an environmental activist and it’s hinted at throughout the text that she looks to take direct action to further her cause.
In the book - work and action is a form of deliverance and faith throughout and it is the uniting force behind all the characters. The reserved but elegant writing style makes it difficult to read at first but it’s worth sticking with because it creates beautiful and philosophical layers. An impressive debut that provides much to think of.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
A solid 3 for Communion, which manages to be both thoughtful and tense without ever quite tipping into melodrama.
Mack’s return to Port Talbot sets the tone early on: “He walked head down with his collar high, convinced he recognised everyone he passed… he’d left to become a different person and returned more or less unchanged.” That sense of being caught between identities runs through the whole book and gives it a quiet steadiness.
What works well is how Doyle lets the moral dilemma unfold without overplaying it. The seal of confession could easily have felt abstract, but here it’s grounded in something immediate and increasingly urgent. The strike storyline adds pressure rather than distraction, and the two strands come together neatly.
It’s not a showy novel, and at times it holds back where you might expect it to push further. But there’s something quite deliberate in that restraint. By the end, it leaves you with a knotty question rather than a tidy resolution, which feels about right for the territory it’s covering.
Mack’s return to Port Talbot sets the tone early on: “He walked head down with his collar high, convinced he recognised everyone he passed… he’d left to become a different person and returned more or less unchanged.” That sense of being caught between identities runs through the whole book and gives it a quiet steadiness.
What works well is how Doyle lets the moral dilemma unfold without overplaying it. The seal of confession could easily have felt abstract, but here it’s grounded in something immediate and increasingly urgent. The strike storyline adds pressure rather than distraction, and the two strands come together neatly.
It’s not a showy novel, and at times it holds back where you might expect it to push further. But there’s something quite deliberate in that restraint. By the end, it leaves you with a knotty question rather than a tidy resolution, which feels about right for the territory it’s covering.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Beautifully descriptive writing with themes of faith, acceptance and belonging.
The main protagonist Mack has recently left the seminary and returned to his home town where there is the imminent threat of major redundancies from the steel works factory which is the main employer in the area. The story takes place during Easter Holy Week and the town is staging a real time enactment of those events to draw wider media attention to their plight.
The various characters and their significance and the at times somewhat surreal sequences made this a challenging read for me and I would have preferred a bit more clarity. The author places a lot of faith in the reader to pull the strands of the story together.
However overall this is a very promising debut.
My thanks to Atlantic Books, NetGalley and the author for this advanced copy
The main protagonist Mack has recently left the seminary and returned to his home town where there is the imminent threat of major redundancies from the steel works factory which is the main employer in the area. The story takes place during Easter Holy Week and the town is staging a real time enactment of those events to draw wider media attention to their plight.
The various characters and their significance and the at times somewhat surreal sequences made this a challenging read for me and I would have preferred a bit more clarity. The author places a lot of faith in the reader to pull the strands of the story together.
However overall this is a very promising debut.
My thanks to Atlantic Books, NetGalley and the author for this advanced copy
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May 9, 2026A wise, witty, and reverent look at the rituals we play - religious, secular, and the overlaps. Beautifully written, with loveable characters, a gripping plot, and Port Talbot brought to life with rich prose.
It's ingeniously multilayered too - one to read again and again.
It's ingeniously multilayered too - one to read again and again.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
The author writes very well! But I'm a simple person and I need answers and a conclusion.
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