Book Review: Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin

From the moment I read the blurb, while I didn’t know exactly what to expect, I knew this was going to be a homerun of a book, and it is. While bringing a microscope up to the hypocrisies and intricacies of the Catholic Church has been examined many times, the angle in which Ní Mhaoileoin approaches such a story is truly commendable; it’s no wonder the book has been shortlisted for the Women’s New Discoveries Award, and won the PFD Queer Fiction Prize. Unable to not spoil where this review is going in the first paragraph, I’ve got to admit that I adored this novel from cover to cover – let’s get into why.

How To Make A Modern Day Saint

Ordinary Saints follows Jay, an Irish queer woman in her late 20s who may presently live in London, but is irrevocably caught up in her past in Ireland. From the first page, we learn that she lost her older brother Ferdia in a freak accident when she was 16, right around the time she was experiencing her first kiss with a girl.

It is clear that this was a canon event in both her and her parents’ lives, as any great and sudden loss would be, but for more reasons than one. At the time of Ferdia’s death, aged 24, he was in the process of becoming a priest. Unusual at the time, Ferdia’s journey predates the publication of the 2009 Ryan Report on child abuse within the Catholic Church, or the 2013 McAleese Report on the Mother and Baby Homes and Magdalene Laundries, but only by a couple of years. Jay refers to the atrocities of both in her narration, and both contribute to why she no longer has faith herself – that and the church’s position on homosexuality.

We meet Jay over a decade after Ferdia’s death, when she gets a phone-call from her parents explaining that they’re pursuing having Ferdia canonised. Essentially, they want to have him made a saint, in the same league as Saint Patrick and Saint Anthony. Seem like a bit of a stretch? As Jay tells us multiple times throughout the novel, the last three Popes (this novel is set pre-repeal the 8th) have made more people saints than all the previous ones combined, a bizarre fact given the decline of organised religion, and of Catholicism generally.

This news turns Jay’s world entirely upside down, as she grapples with the spotlight this puts on her family, and forces her to come to terms with the difficulties she’s faced as the sister of a would-be priest who is also a lesbian, unaccepted by the church Ferdia was signing his life away to.

Queer Identity and the Catholic Church

This novel deals with an ambitious amount of content; depression, grief, crisis of identity, loss of faith, but it never feels like too much. Each is dealt with compassionately and given the deserved amount of space, unspooled delicately for the reader. Whether it’s carefully unpacking Jay’s mother’s battle with depression, both before and after Ferdia’s death, or Jay’s difficulty reconciling both parts of her identity – the version that went to Catholic school and grew up with certain values in Ireland, and the one who lives more freely and openly in London – the novel allows time to discuss the multi-faceted sides to these issues, and the complexity of taking all you have learnt, applying what you believe and releasing what no longer serves you.

That this is a story about an Irish emigrant only emphasises these difficulties, with the two sides literally split between the two countries in Jay’s case. And while Jay rejects how she was raised, and the belief system she grew up with, it is ultimately part of her in a distinct Irish way, in a way she tries to explain to her British Catholic girlfriend Lindsey, who cannot see the distinction between the two. I found the novel to be both blunt and harsh in its depiction of Catholicism, understandably given our protagonist’s sexuality, and how the church rejects anything other than the heterosexual nuclear family. It perfectly paints the picture of Catholic shame that so many Irish still live with, no matter what their relationship with the religion is.

Yet, it also offered a surprisingly sympathetic perspective on those who continue to hold their faith close, even as they wrestle with the controversies surrounding the institution – the kind documented in the McAleese and Ryan reports. Jay’s parents and how they feel about Ferdia and the church is incredibly interesting, an insight that’s not often seen in modern stories. That this is done massively subverted my expectations, and made for a more interesting book. Jay rejects the church, but no matter how much they’ve hurt her with their views, she loves her parents – coming to terms with these two facts is no easy task for her. Even how she feels about Ferdia – while we see passages where his devotion to Catholicism created uncrossable space between them, we also see a typical sibling relationship, one cut far too short by an accident that couldn’t have been predicted.

This isn’t a light read – it asks questions that demand answers, but doesn’t always give them. Many in Ireland are still grappling with some of the incredibly difficult truths of Catholicism, particularly those who don’t want to abandon it altogether and the novel doesn’t ask anyone to. It’s not prescriptive in how we should navigate the world – only that we should respect how people live, as long as it hurts no one else.

There is anger always at the surface – this is a novel from the perspective of a gay woman who is not entirely accepted by her family, and absolutely not accepted by the faith she was reared in, so naturally she feels anger. But always, even when she’s at her most furious, even she’s on the verge of banshee screaming with frustration, Jay has an incredible amount of empathy for those with different views to her. It presents a way in which we should approach those who might carry beliefs that do not match our own.

It’s a reminder on how to conduct ourselves, on how to live and let live. No matter how Jay feels about the canonisation, she has to ask, what would Ferdia have wanted – and does that hold more weight?