Blog tour: Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin

This post is part of a blog tour organised by Random Things Blog Tours. I received a free copy of the book in return for an honest review.

‘Can you imagine it?

‘Can you imagine me there in the front row in Saint Peter’s Square?

‘The lesbian sister of a literal saint.

‘Brought up in a devout household in Ireland, Jay is now living in London with her girlfriend, determined to live day to day and not think too much about either the future or the past.

‘But when she learns that her beloved older brother, who died in a terrible accident, may be made into a Catholic saint, she realises she must at last confront her family, her childhood and herself…’

In Ordinary Saints, by Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin, we meet Jacinta (Jay) Devane, a 29-year-old Irish lesbian working as a marketing executive in late-2010s London, who’s distanced herself from her devout Catholic family.

When Jay was 16 – on the very night she first kissed a girl, in fact – her older brother Ferdia, who was in Rome training to be a priest, died in a freak accident while playing football. Now their parents have launched a campaign for Ferdia to be made into a saint, awakening memories and feelings Jay has been pushing down for a very long time.

I loved Ordinary Saints! As well as being an interesting and emotional story with a main character I really liked and felt for, the author’s writing absolutely sparkles, with some stunning turns of phrase, as well as flashes of humour in the unlikeliest of situations.

Jay’s narrative voice is by turns observant, witty, and heart-breaking as you share in her consternation at the saint-nominating process she’s been drawn into, and her hurt from being the less-favoured, often overlooked child of her particular parents. I also found her relateable because we happen to have been born in the same year – hooray (not) for graduating during a recession, starting a career through luck rather than design, and seeing the cost of living go through the roof!

While Catholicism is obviously a major theme of this novel, the author makes no assumptions about the reader’s prior knowledge. For example, while I learned for the first time about some of the stories Irish Catholic children are taught in school, I think someone who already knew them would be nodding in recognition, rather than feeling patronised.

Through Jay’s lens as a sceptic and outcast who no longer considers herself to be a Catholic, we see how the church is, variously: a framework for life and source of comfort, community, and ritual (for those who fit in); an outdated system of oppression, punishment, and shame (for those who don’t, and/or are traumatised victims of Magdalene laundries or abusive church elders); a locus of esoteric, mystical, and sometimes frankly bizarre-sounding processes and traditions; and much more besides.

As ever, though, the theme that captivated me the most was the inner workings of families. A point I made in my thesis was that siblings, despite sharing parents and a home, don’t necessarily grow up in the same environment, due to the timing of their births and the way they can invoke different reactions from the get-go.

This absolutely plays out in Ferdia and Jay’s case, with the former not only being a very good Catholic from a young age, but (in their parents’ recollections, which might well be coloured by his subsequent piousness and tragic death) a placid baby, whereas Jay is characterised as having been loud and difficult before she was even aware of being in her golden brother’s shadow.

What’s more, Jay’s early childhood coincided with a flare-up of their mother’s intermittent mental health issues, which would also have coloured her experiences, family relationships, and view of herself. None of this is her fault, and she’s right to be angry and upset about it.

Ferdia’s pending sainthood prompts Jay to reflect on their relationship, and realise that – as suggested above – his untimely death has caused his loved ones, including herself, to put him on a pedestal, and gloss over any negativity or complexity.

The eight-year age gap between the pair led Jay to hero-worship her brother when she was small and he still lived at home, but feel distant from him when she was a teenager and he was away at the seminary. Furthermore, she can remember him expressing anger in a way others might not have witnessed, and she has no way of knowing how he would have reacted to her coming out.

Ordinary Saints is touching, thought-provoking, and full of brilliantly dark humour.