I found Odran’s plight incredibly moving and felt for the character, even as a part of me was screaming ‘how could you not do something?!’ Boyne masterfully depicts the feeling of melancholy and heavy guilt that hang over Odran’s later life as he comes to terms with the consequences of his inaction and willful blindness. Although Odran is a good man and has never abused another individual, he is not wholly innocent either. Like some of Boyne’s other protagonists, Odran has a boyish quality of innocence that isn’t quite extinguished until the novel draws to a close. Odran is a sympathetic character, a man pushed towards the priesthood by his mother but who genuinely believes in his vocation.

A History of Loneliness spans Odran’s early family life and his seminary schooling during the 1960s and 70s through to twenty-first century accusations made against the Catholic Church and Odran’s recognition of the role his silence has played in allowing the abuse to continue. Each chapter is set during a different year of Father Odran Yates’ life, but the story unfolds non-chronologically, shifting back and forth through time.

In doing so, the Church opted to place the survival of the institution above the safety of its parishioners.Īs he does in both The Absolutist and The Heart’s Invisible Furies, Boyne opts to tell the story from the perspective of a man looking back on his life. A powerful novel about silence, complicity, and guilt, John Boyne’s A History of Loneliness is a fictionalized, unflinching account of the Irish Catholic Church practice of covering up allegations of abuse among its ranks by transferring abusive priests to another parish, where they were likely to re-offend, instead of reporting them to the gardaí (Irish police).

The absolutist lib e john boyne