A History of Loneliness by John Boyne: Review

By Elizabeth Warkentin
Toronto Star
March 7, 2015

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2015/02/21/a-history-of-loneliness-by-john-boyne-review.html

John Boyne’s ninth novel for adults, A History of Loneliness, is an achingly sad story of a kind-hearted but cowardly priest who prefers to bury his head in the sand than confront difficult situations.

Boyne waited years to write this brave, personal, yet ultimately Irish story. “The Catholic priesthood blighted my youth and the youth of people like me,” he says of growing up gay in Catholic Ireland. In a piece for The Guardian he recalls being groped in class by his teachers and being told by these same men that he was sick, mentally disordered and in need of electroshock therapy. The author admits that like his protagonist, Dubliner Odran Yates, perhaps the reason he did not write about his experiences sooner was that he was ashamed. “I did not become ashamed of being Irish until I was well into the middle years of my life,” says Odran Yates in the opening sentence of the novel.

Odran enters Clonliffe Seminary in 1972, after his mother informs him that he has a vocation. The boy is not sure that the priesthood is indeed his destiny, but the family having suffered a double tragedy some years earlier, Odran wishes to please his mother. Besides, at 17, he has no better ideas. Full of optimism for his future, Odran is a good student, keen to please his teachers and make friends. As is so often the case in young men’s friendships, his “cellmate,” Tom Cardle, becomes his default BFF, by simple virtue of their bunking together. Odran is curiously loyal to Tom throughout their teen and adult years, though the two have nothing in common besides a shared past.

Odrans’ narration back and forth between innocent boy who loses his father, seminary student, faithful friend and devoted middle-aged priest who averts his eyes from what he doesn’t wish to see is nothing short of brilliant. ‘How can he not see?’ we wonder, infuriated at his wilful ignorance when yet more evidence of the Church’s egregious abuse of power appears smack before his stubborn eyes. Our narrator’s story is told in a non-linear fashion, swinging like a crazed Foucault pendulum — forward and backward, in-between, and forward and back again — omitting important pieces here, filling us in there, building up the suspense and revealing only what Odran himself is willing to see at the time.

The only part of the novel that is less credible is the portion set in Rome, where Odran spends his final year as a student. He is selected for the honour of serving evening and morning tea to the pope and, as a result, is privy to a dark secret about the death of Pope John Paul I. He is told to keep it under wraps which, Odran being the obedient servant that he is, does. Unfortunately, this subplot is not especially necessary and detracts from the main story.

Eventually, as the horrific truth about the incidence of child sexual abuse by priests and its deliberate concealment by the higher-ups in the Irish Catholic Church and the Vatican is revealed by the courts and in the media, as former friends and colleagues in the clergy are tried and jailed for their crimes, a middle-aged Odran is forced to acknowledge his own guilt in these crimes. His beloved nephew, Aidan, may be right, he realizes: “Ireland is rotten. Rotten to the core. I’m sorry, but you priests destroyed it.”

And, yes, as Tom points out, Odran knew the truth all along; he just didn’t have the courage to see it.

Shattered by his own complicity and by the betrayal of an institution to which he has dedicated his life and soul, Odran must now find the strength to leave his “history of loneliness” behind and live a life he can be proud of.

In the hands of a less agile writer, the complex narration of this novel and its passionate denunciation of the Catholic Church would likely have failed. Fortunately for us, Boyne is a master storyteller. When I arrived at the last page, I knew I had just read an instant classic.

Elizabeth Warkentin is a Montreal-based freelance writer.