Communion by Jon Doyle review – a charged debut about sin and solace

A man who meant to be a priest is faced with a moral crossroads in this ambitious and affecting first novel Jon Doyle’s debut novel tells the story of Mack O’Brien, a young man who went to a seminary to study for the priesthood but was asked to leave because he had no real calling, and has therefore returned to his family home in Wales to work out what to do with his life. Cheek by jowl with his ailing, deeply religious mother, and a father struggling to process the grief of his own parents’ re…