When failure becomes the real story
Jon Doyle's debut asks what happens after you discover you're not who you thought you'd be
What do you do with a life that was supposed to go somewhere else entirely?
Jon Doyle's Communion follows Mack O'Brien, who "was asked to leave" seminary because "he had no real calling" for the priesthood. That phrase hits differently than if he'd simply chosen to leave. There's something about being told you don't have what it takes for the thing you thought defined you.
Mack returns home to Wales, stuck between his "ailing, deeply religious mother" and a grieving father, carrying the weight of not being the person everyone expected him to become.
The setup reminds me of that moment in Glennon Doyle's Untamed where she realizes her entire life was built around other people's expectations rather than her own truth. But where Doyle's narrative moves toward liberation, Mack seems caught in the aftermath of that realization, trying to figure out what comes next when the script you were following gets torn up.
I'm not sure this holds up as a perfect parallel, but there's something about failed vocations that feels particularly modern. We're told to follow our passion, find our purpose, but what happens when you try and it doesn't work? When the thing you thought was your calling turns out to be wishful thinking?
Doyle apparently makes this personal crisis feel universal without losing the specific texture of Welsh family dynamics and religious expectation. The Guardian review calls it "ambitious and affecting," which could mean anything, but the fact that it's rooted in such a particular kind of disappointment makes me curious.
There's also something interesting about the title. Communion suggests connection, shared experience, the ritual that brings people together. But Mack is fundamentally alone with his failure, trying to find his way back to some kind of community after being rejected by the one he thought he belonged to.
Maybe that's what makes this feel different from other coming-of-age stories. It's not about becoming someone new. It's about learning to live as yourself after discovering you're not who you thought you were. Which might be the more honest story anyway.
