Wayward Saints

Wayward Saints by Suzzy Roche (of the folk band the Roches) follows the lives of Mary Saint, lead singer of the once indie-famous band Sliced Ham, and her friends and family. Mary left her home of Swallow, New York as a teenager, leaving behind her mother, Jean, and abusive father, Bub. She travels the world with Sliced Ham. The band starts to grow in popularity, but they become weighted down by drugs and liquor. Her lover and fellow band mate, nicknamed Garbagio, falls intoxicated from a balcony and dies one night. Sliced Ham peeters out from there, and Mary slips into depression and alcoholism. She recovers, eventually, and moves to San Fran. There, she meets a tranny named Thaddeus at a homeless shelter, and the two move in together. It is then that she gets the call from her mother, asking her to return to Swallow to play a show at the town’s high school.

Jean has been living on her own since she checked Bub into a nursing home after he suffered a stroke. When the English teacher at the high school approached her about contacting Mary to do a show, Jean was hesitant but complaint. Throughout most of the book she anxiously awaits her daughter’s return, trying to understand her abusive relationship with her husband and distant relationship with Mary. She coincidentally meets Garbagio’s father—his wife is in the same nursing home as Bub—and the two strike up a friendship. Jean is also incredibly devout, and much of the book focuses on how she grounds herself with her faith.

There is a cast of secondary characters that float in and out of the book, but Mary and Jean are the staples that keep the novel propelling forward. Although the book is told in the third-person omniscient, I found most of the closer looks at secondary characters to be a bit unnecessary. I was always most interested in Mary and Jean.

Wayward Saints is Roche’s debut novel, and it is somewhat uneven because of that. For example, Mary seems very authentic and her character is fully conveyed to the audience. Somehow, she doesn’t fall into the stereotypes of “alternative rocker chick” and manages to seem fresh and interesting. However, there are other parts of the book that are less realistic or fleshed out. The conversations between Jean and Garbagio’s father are ones I know are supposed to be meaningful but felt a little trite to me. Whenever I was reading the dialogue, I kept thinking that their conversations needed to go a little deeper, and the word choice needed to be a little more original. The dialogue itself felt flat, even though I cared about both of the characters and their relationship. “This is exactly how I would expect older people to interact with each other,” I found myself thinking.

Another place of unevenness was the theme of religion and faith. The references to religion and the characters’ attachment (or discord) from God are constantly present throughout the novel. However, Roche needed to expand the theme a little more. When Mary was a child, she thought she was visited—and fondled—by the Virgin Mary.  Mary finds this memory to be somewhat of a comfort, and states the Virgin gave her the strength to sing. Her devout mother finds this vision appalling. By the end of the novel, I couldn’t quite understand what we were supposed to feel about religion. Is it a support system? A fantasy? A crux? All of these things?

I did appreciate the way the book looks at the music industry. It is critical of it (for its drugs, money, alcohol) but also encapsulates the magic of a good live show, which can be a quasi-religious experience in itself. I think in the future Roche will be able to flesh out her novels a bit better. I was reminded of when I reviewed High Fidelity. One of the things I loved about that book was that it was equal parts a wonderful book about music and a wonderful book about relationships. Wayward Saints is a wonderful book about music and an ok book about relationships. More than anything, the book just had the feeling of being published a draft too soon. But the prose is beautiful, clean, and descriptive. And I have faith that Roche’s second novel will be even and masterful.