Communion: Jon Doyle in Conversation with Carole Hailey - Cardiff

Join us in welcoming Jon Doyle to Waterstones Cardiff, in conversation with Carole Hailey, to talk about his debut novel Communion!
Just so we're clear, she said, I know the rules of confession. What I say cannot be repeated. Not to anyone...When Mack O'Brien left his home in Port Talbot for the seminary as a teenager, he didn't imagine he'd be back a decade later, unordained and still at a loss as to what makes for a moral life. He takes a job as a security guard at the local steelworks and begins an uneasy transition into the world he once rejected. When the men of the steelworks organise an unprecedented strike in protest against job cuts, he sees no reason not to go along with it.The last person Mack expects to see in the local club is Siwan Roderick - the woman who appeared out of the blue at the seminary one day to make a confession and swear him to secrecy. Mack kept his word. But as the day of the strike nears, and as he begins to fully understand whatSiwan is planning, Mack is forced to reckon with his loyalty to her and the question of whether an act of violence can ever be justified.
'An immaculate debut with dirt under its fingernails' —Colin Walsh, author of Kala

Jon Doyle is a writer from Port Talbot, South Wales. His work has appeared in Short Fiction, The Rumpus, Hobart, Ploughshares online, Full Stop, 3:AM Magazine, and Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, among others. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Cardiff University and a PhD in Creative Writing from Swansea University, is the recipient of the Literature Wales Writers’ Bursary and part of the 2022-23 Representing Wales scheme, and won the Writers & Artists Working Class Writer’s Prize 2023 . He also runs the arts website Various Small Flames.
Carole Hailey is an ex-lawyer turned author. Her first novel The Silence Project published in 2023 was a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Book, a Waterstones Welsh Book of the Month, an Indie Bookseller Book of the Month and a Kindle No. 1 Bestseller. Her second novel Scenes from a Tragedy was published in 2025 and her third, The Falling, will be out later this year. Carole lives in Wales with her husband and two dogs.

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Doors open at 18:30. Latecomers will be admitted until 19:15.

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