A Catholic priest appears to promise the world; a schoolgirl starved for affection and looking to escape her violent home life – this is the story of Maggie.
In the autumn of 1967, seventeen-year-old Maggie Reed is dreaming of breaking free from her troubled family. All she must do is move from childhood to adulthood. For her, university will be the key. Then, one morning after Mass, she meets the new curate, and is slowly drawn into a taboo relationship with the much older Father Nihill.
Bringing to life descriptions of 1960s Australia that are by turns starkly confronting and exquisitely beautiful, Maggie explores questions of power in a complex, forbidden relationship and reveals the strength of a young woman who both loses herself and finds herself anew.
Maggie is Catherine Johns’ first novel, and what a powerful debut it is. Right from the prologue, I was lulled into the rhythm of her writing, leaving a trail of questions that were answered over the course of the novel – I was immediately hooked. Written with sparse and stunning prose, this is a devastating coming-of-age story about a young woman who is on-track for a bright future, thanks to her academic brilliance and hard work, and is derailed after an older priest grooms her.
It would be amiss of me to not make mention of another novel that told the story of a Meggie – slight difference – and a priest. Although I will always love The Thorn Birds, much of it doesn’t hold up today, and this is where Catherine John’s novel differs – while it’s a historical, it looks at the relationship between this Maggie and her priest through a modern lens.
While Maggie charts lost innocence and thwarted dreams, it’s primarily a story of survival. Our protagonist, compelling right from the opening pages, has already survived a lot for a woman of her age and time, even before falling into a forbidden love affair. She’s already traversed growing up with a violent alcoholic father, and in a family dynamic where she clearly doesn’t belong. But it’s her intelligence and deep desire for something else that gives her the strength and resilience to overcome these challenges, and to ultimately more than survive – to thrive.
Maggie is an excellent novel about power, boundaries, entitlement, shame, stigma and isolation. Thought-provoking and extremely readable, it’s an extraordinary debut, and I look forward to what Catherine Johns delivers next.
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