Port Talbot, where Jon Doyle is from and where his debut novel Communion is set, has its own lore, iconography and peculiarities, like most towns. Doyle’s success – one of many, actually – is to hone in on those and simultaneously capture the discord felt around the UK, probably elsewhere too, by the continuing onset of post-industrialism.
He builds a world using fictionalised versions of two real-life Port Talbot events. One is the swingeing job cuts at the town steelworks, which employs nearly all of Communion’s male characters. Mack, the novel’s protagonist, strikes alongside his colleagues; his employment terms as a security guard mean he’s technically not obliged to, but as someone who’s returned to town after leaving in a chequered attempt to become a priest, he’s enough of an awkward outsider already.
The other is an immersive, town-wide drama about Christ’s final days, clearly based on National Theatre Wales’ The Passion from 2011 but in Communion an annual Port Talbot tradition of decades standing. It’s an ironic distraction from the townsfolk’s real-life problems – one strong scene finds Mack, late at night, having to talk down a suicidal proselytiser whom he initially assumes to be doing some method acting.
And then there’s Siwan, a friend from Mack’s teens for whom he evidently carries a torch of sorts, and who is plotting some sort of terrible criminal act. We are not let in on what or why, indeed it’s not clear that Mack is either, yet he’s dog-loyal as her plan builds momentum. A pivotal character of few words, Siwan’s presence in Communion doesn’t so much advance the plot as cloud the picture, but Doyle uses her deftly to weigh the strange vagaries of old friendships and how, in a close-knit community, it can be hard for a life to truly be private.
