Latest news with #OrdinarySaints
Irish Times
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Author Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin: ‘I'll always be angry about the history of the church in Ireland'
Tell us about your debut novel, Ordinary Saints. Ordinary Saints is about Jay, a queer Irish woman living in London who finds out that her dead older brother, Ferdia, may become a Catholic saint. It was inspired by Carlo Acutis, the 'first millennial saint', who was due to be canonised two days after your book came out. Tell us about him and the whole canonisation process. Carlo Acutis was an Italian teenager who died of leukaemia in 2006. He was a very religious child who, among other acts of devotion, built a website cataloguing eucharistic miracles. After reading his story, I became obsessed with the arcane and bizarre process of canonisation. To this day, it involves exhumation, healing miracles, intrusive investigations of candidates' lives and often, as in Carlo's case, the public display of physical remains. Having grown up gay in Ireland, how do you feel about the Catholic Church? I'll always be angry about the history of the church in Ireland – the violence inflicted on children, women, queer people and many others. But there is a distinction between the institution and the faithful. In some ways, Ordinary Saints is a celebration of the power of faith, even as it criticises the church. How did the novel evolve over its various drafts? On my first draft, I got to 20,000 words then threw them out and started again. At the beginning of that second draft I found my narrator Jay's voice. From there, the story flowed pretty steadily. READ MORE The late Pope Francis crops up in Ordinary Saints. What did you make of him? I feel quite ambivalent. In many ways, Francis gave us a glimpse of what the Catholic Church could be – a church of the poor and the marginalised. But there always seemed to be a limit to his progressive ambition, particularly when it came to women's and LGBTQ+ rights. Do you have a favourite saint? I've always had a grá for Bríd. I appreciate her healthy disregard for authority. You were shortlisted for the Women's Prize Trust Discoveries Prize in 2022, and won the inaugural PFD Queer Fiction Prize. Did this help? Hugely. Writing a debut novel is daunting and the prizes gave me a confidence boost. They also helped me find a community of other writers. You won The Irish Times debating championship in 2010, as did your father, Eoin, in 1983. Sally Rooney made her name as a debater, too. Does it feed into your writing? Debating is great training for any career that requires compelling communication. But the whole point is to win arguments and take definitive positions. Fiction is different; it's about asking open questions and embracing uncertainty. You live in Edinburgh now. Does the distance help you write about home? I started Ordinary Saints during lockdown, when I couldn't travel home. That time gave me both a new clarity about Ireland and a sense of longing, both of which influenced the book. Like fellow author Michael Collins, you are an endurance athlete. Are there similarities with writing? Definitely. Writing and distance running are both about showing up every day and putting in the effort, whether you feel like it or not. Which projects are you working on? I've got a new novel in the works, but I'm very cagey about my works in progress! Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage? I've lived in three great literary cities, where you can go on mini-pilgrimages all the time. I remember spontaneously changing my cycle route home one evening because I wanted to see the street in London where Beckett's Murphy lived. What is the best writing advice you have heard? Focus on the sentence, the one you're writing right now. Who do you admire the most? The people of Palestine for their courage, humanity and perseverance. You are the supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish? I'd establish the necessary legal framework for trans people to live freely and in peace. Which current book, film and podcast would you recommend? Stag Dance by Torrey Peters; Conclave; and Critics at Large, a cultural podcast from the New Yorker. Which public event affected you most? I was only eight when the Good Friday Agreement was signed, but I vividly remember going to the Stations of the Cross that day and feeling the intensity of all the adults' emotions. What is the most beautiful book that you own? My great-grandfather, Séamas Ó Maoileoin, wrote a book called B'Fhiú an Braon Fola , published by Sairséal agus Dill, about his involvement in the War of Independence. I have a beautiful copy, which includes maps drawn by my grandfather, Ailbe. The best and worst things about where you live? Like Dublin, Edinburgh combines all the cultural attractions of the city with easy access to the mountains and the sea. But it is very dark for a lot of the year. What is your favourite quotation? The final passage of Middlemarch. '... the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.' Who is your favourite fictional character? Sally Seton in Mrs Dalloway . A book to make me laugh? Wild Geese by Soula Emmanuel. Hilarious, as well as insightful and moving. A book that might move me to tears? I most recently cried reading Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell. Ordinary Saints is published by Manilla Press
Irish Examiner
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Beginner's pluck: Dublin-born writer Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin
An intense child, Niamh always loved writing. 'I scribbled lines before I could write,' she says, 'and at eight, I wrote poems and performed them at my parent's parties, but I lost confidence in my late teens.' Graduating in 2011, Niamh moved to London and worked for non-profit organisations, with social justice publications, with charities and unions on media relations, doing story telling for social change. She then studied politics at SOAS before working for a political blog and doing some freelance journalism. 'Then I worked for the Trades Union Congress and then switched to working freelance.' I like having a mix of different projects. All this time Niamh had yearned to write fiction, but there was never time. 'You have to make space. The pandemic focused me. 'I started writing the novel in January 2021 and sold it in the summer of 2023.' Meanwhile, in 2022, she won the PFD Queer Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize Discoveries Award, (for the first 10,000 words of a novel). Ordinary Saints was selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club. Who is Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin? Date/ place of birth: 1989/ Dublin. Education: Castleknock Community College; Trinity College Dublin, English with Classical Civilisation. SOAS, (School of Oriental and African Studies,) Politics. Home: Edinburgh, since 2020. Family: 'I have an incredible group of friends, which includes my sisters, Aoife and Dearbhaile.' The day job: Freelance in non-profit communications. In another life: 'I might have gone into the law and become a barrister.' Favourite writers: Virginia Woolf; Toni Morrison; Dorris Lessing; John MacGahern; Ruth Ozeki; Torrey Peters. Second book: 'It's in the early stages.' Top tip: 'I loved the George Saunders quote: 'Focus on the sentence.'' Website: Instagram: @niamhsquared The debut Ordinary Saints Manilla Press, €15.99 Jay has escaped her devout Irish family and lives in London with her girlfriend. But when she learns that Ferdia, the brother she adored — a priest who died young after a fatal accident — is being considered as a Catholic Saint, she's forced to confront her childhood and her family. Will she come to terms with the past? The verdict: This debut is pretty perfect. It's informative, original, heartfelt, very real, and stunningly written. The characters linger in your mind.
RTÉ News
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin on faith, family, identity and her debut novel
Writer Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin introduces her debut novel Ordinary Saints, an exploration of family, grief, queer identity, and the legacy of the Catholic Church in Ireland. In October 2020, I read a news story about the Italian teenager Carlo Acutis who, this week, will become the first millennial saint. Until then, I'm not sure I believed in creative lightning bolts. But as soon as I read that article, I saw the shape of what would become my first novel, Ordinary Saints. It tells the story of Jay, a queer Irish woman living in London. She's fiercely independent, borderline estranged from her parents, and determined to ignore her past. She has a group of close friends and a new girlfriend she's really into, but she tells them hardly anything about her life growing up, including the fact that her older brother Ferdia, a trainee priest, was killed in an accident when he was 24 and she was 16. Listen: Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin talks to RTÉ Arena Then, at the very beginning of the novel, she gets a call from her father, who tells her that the Archdiocese of Dublin is kicking off the process to have Ferdia made a Catholic saint. He invites Jay to come home for a mass celebrating the news and, in the months that follow, the stark divides that she's established in her life start to break down. She finally has to grapple with her grief for Ferdia, her relationship with her parents, and her feelings about the Catholic Church. When I began writing, I knew that the question of Ireland's social and religious transformation could be of interest to a broad audience. Living in the UK for the last twelve years, I've often found myself in conversations about our national progressive glow up, with spikes of interest around the marriage equality referendum, the repeal referendum, and that Christmas when literally everyone was gifted a copy of Small Things Like These. Looking at my own experience, the first eighteen years of my life were completely infused with religious belief. But in approaching the novel, I wasn't primarily interested in the headlines or statistics. Rather, the question that animated my writing was: how did it feel to live through this period of Irish history? How did it feel being a young queer person, seeing the country changing around you but still not trusting that it was safe to come out? How did it feel, as a Catholic parent, to continue bringing your children to mass through the successive waves of scandal? How did it feel to watch those children grow up and drift away from the faith? If the family is (officially) the fundamental unit of Irish society, how have our families adapted to the ruptures of the last three decades, and at what emotional cost? For the purposes of the novel, I decided to push these questions to something of an extreme, through the device of Ferdia's cause for canonisation. But at the same time, I've tried to explore my themes with as much nuance and understanding as possible. Ordinary Saints doesn't shy away from the failures and crimes of the Catholic Church, but it recognises that these questions of faith, family and identity are complicated. Looking at my own experience, the first eighteen years of my life were completely infused with religious belief. That brought some darkness, inevitably, in the form of guilt, shame, fear, and anger at the terrible abuses perpetrated by the Church. But at the same time, there are parts of it that I miss: the music, the familiar rhythm of the prayers, seeing almost everyone I knew at mass on Sunday mornings. In Ordinary Saints, I've tried to capture this ambivalence, which I suspect many people brought up in religious homes feel. You can at once hate that way that religion constricted your life, and also miss its moral clarity and comfort, or struggle to find another system of meaning to take its place. So ultimately, Ordinary Saints is story driven by questions rather than answers. On one level, it's about an obscure theological process. But much more than that, it's about a complicated family battling with grief and change – and trying to hold on to love through it all.
Irish Times
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin: Inventive exploration of queer identity, faith and family
Ordinary Saints Author : Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin ISBN-13 : 9781786584236 Publisher : Manilla Press Guideline Price : £16.99 Over the past few years, new Irish novelists have been coming up with increasingly original ideas, moving away from a period where tried and commercially trusted formulas dominated. In her debut, Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin adds her name to this list with a premise that sounds outlandish but is nevertheless based in reality. What happens in the book, after all, has to happen to someone . The narrator, Jay, is a young woman whose late brother Ferdia was in training for the priesthood when he tragically died. Now, some years later, he's being considered for sainthood. Yes, that's still a thing, she tells various friends, presenting some rather fascinating statistics, both for their benefit and ours. Having exiled herself to London, mostly to escape well-meaning but exasperating parents, this unexpected development forces her to examine her family history, along with her relationship with a church that has rarely been a friend to gay men or lesbians. 'Can you imagine me there in the front row in St Peter's Square?' she asks, baffled by the process that's kicking into gear. 'The lesbian sister of a literal saint.' Sensible novelists practise caution when writing about the church, knowing that to villainise priests is to descend into cliche, while to praise them is to ignore the many crimes for which their institution has been held responsible. One way to do it, and which Ní Mhaoileoin adopts successfully, is to present those in positions of clerical authority as relatively benign figures, apparently doing all they can to help their congregations, while nevertheless supporting an organisation that many would argue was built upon the subjugation of women and the glorification of the traditional Irish family, which has not always been the flawless institution they would have us believe. READ MORE Jay is rightly sceptical about the church's motivations for trying to force her dead brother into a role he never asked for, and also disturbed by what might lie ahead. There's talk of exhumation, of moving his remains to an overground shrine in Knock, of the need for miracles to be confirmed and ascribed to him, of having his clothes cut into tiny pieces and distributed to the faithful as relics. However, she never mocks those for whom faith is a bedrock of their lives and, when she challenges true believers, she's often left confronting her own prejudices. This is exactly how contemporary, provocative literature should operate. And yet, there are things that rankle. In a flashback scene, while referring to a prayer, Ferdia's reference to the future Pope Francis feels shoehorned into the text – 'I recently heard that one of the new cardinals – a guy called Bergoglio – says it helps him in his duties', while a few pages on Matt Talbot turn into a screed against the current Bishop of Rome and come across as authorial intrusion. And then there's Ní Mhaoileoin's relentless use of the word 'queer', which shows up a dozen times, thrice, over five pages in various formations. It's a word that remains deeply offensive to anyone who grew up at a time when it was used as a term of abuse and, even now, would never go unchallenged, so its repetition feels deliberately pointed. For many gay readers, including this one, it's like nails on a chalkboard. [ Wild Fictions by Amitav Ghosh: Sparkling and wise writing about the state of the world Opens in new window ] However, such irritations are balanced by things that are too good to ignore. A scene where Jay meets an old seminarian friend of her brother is compelling, and when Jay recalls her brother lying in his bed, 'weighed down by a lasagne of woollen blankets', she provides one of the most brilliant images I've read in some time. A scene set in London towards the end, where Jay spends time with both her mother and her girlfriend, is beautifully written, genuinely moving, and often quite funny. In fact, it's the perfect ending for the novel, and I reached the last page – or what I thought was the last page – literally wiping tears from my eyes. But a wholly unnecessary final chapter deflates the emotional power of what the author has just created, and I longed to be an editor, leaping in and insisting that no, this is how the book should conclude. But then, the most memorable novels are often those that balance strong writing, intriguing characters, and inventive plotlines with occasional moments of frustration. And Ordinary Saints will, I think, prove memorable.
RTÉ News
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin
We present an extract from Ordinary Saints, the debut novel by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin. 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... The first time I kissed a girl my brother died. I was sixteen and at a party in a big house overlooking Dublin Bay. My brother was in Rome, studying to be a priest. For most of the evening, though it was only Saint Patrick's Day and still cold, I sat alone on an elaborate wooden patio chair, getting drunk and staring at the glimmer of the coastline, following the slow ferry's lights as it pulled out to sea. 'Do you mind if I sit with you? I've brought supplies.' It's Aisling, a friend of a friend from the Irish-speaking school across town. 'Oh yeah, yeah, of course.' The words gurgle a little in my throat so I gesture at the other chair in the set to confirm. Aisling, carrying a bottle of wine in one hand and a small basket of garlic bread in the other, lowers herself down. 'It's so sweaty inside,' she says. 'And loud. I was looking for somewhere I could rest for a minute and then I saw you out here.' 'I'm being pretty anti-social,' I say, which is true. I realised too late that I was in no mood for Síofra's house party, with all its shouting and spilling drinks and close, hot breath. My humour was all right when I left home in the afternoon but around seven or half seven something shifted. I felt myself hating every new face that came through the crystal-paned front door. Later, after I find out, I try to track my movements against my brother's, to figure out if this abrupt emotional unmooring is a tele-pathic reaction to his energy being suddenly and improbably sucked from the universe. But the timings don't match up. I'm just in a mood. 'Fair enough,' Aisling says, pouring wine into the mug I've balanced on the arm of the chair. Lady Golfers Have More Drive, it reads in cartoon letters. She looks up and smiles, her teeth so straight and white that they catch the moonlight. 'Though I have been wondering why you never talk to me.' I don't know what to say. It's never occurred to me to speak to Aisling, who's a year and a half older than me and half a foot taller, plays football for Dublin and looks like a warrior queen from ancient mythology: big joints, pale skin, a tumble of reddish hair. I smile back. 'I'm shy.' Inside, there's the sudden sound of girls screaming and we both turn, thinking something's happened. But then someone turns the music up and they all shriek again, the noise breaking through the patio doors and spilling across the lawn. 'Jesus Christ,' murmurs Aisling. 'If I never hear "Mr Brightside" again in my life it'll be too soon.' I laugh, a bit too loud. 'I hate them too.' 'Yeah? What kind of music do you like?' The garlic bread becomes very dry in my mouth and I have to force a scratchy swallow. 'Oh, a bit of everything.' Aisling raises a fair, almost invisible eyebrow. 'Cool. I love everything too.' 'Nick Cave!' I nearly shout, though I've only heard one of his songs – last week, on the radio in my father's car – and can't even remember what it was called. 'Hmm, OK. That is cool.' Relief floods my body, so powerful that I think it might knock me out. 'It's a bit rubbish though, isn't it, liking different music to everyone else? It kind of makes you feel like an outsider.' I say nothing. We watch two trains curve silently along the bay, their lights getting closer and closer, looking like they might crash. 'You know, any time I see a train, even if I know it's only going to Bray or whatever, it makes me jealous of the people on it. That they're going somewhere and I'm not.' It sounds stupid as I say it, but Aisling doesn't laugh. Instead, she reaches out and takes my hand, dreamily, sympathetically, like other girls sometimes do when they talk. The world begins spinning faster then, the stars and the darkness of the sea and the sounds of the party all swirling together, catching fire and extinguishing from one moment to the next so that the two small islands of our patio chairs are the only points of stillness in the universe and our hands the bridge between them. I wonder if this is what a mystical experience would feel like. I wonder if I'm being called by God. We stay there talking in the darkness for hours until Aisling says that she's sorry but she absolutely has to go to the bathroom. 'But please don't leave,' she says and I shake my head, even though I'm freezing, my lips so numb they're slurring over words. Once she's gone, the silence and intensity of my feelings are too much to cope with. I look at my phone. Four missed calls, two from each of my parents. My chest tightens. How do they know? A text appears from my father: Please call us back as soon as you see this. We urgently need to speak to you.
