"a History of Loneliness"

By Bill Schwab
eMissourian
March 17, 2015

http://www.emissourian.com/blogs/mo_books/review-a-history-of-loneliness/article_6ef99f2a-cb30-11e4-9fff-7b0bac6908c7.html

Irish author John Boyne’s insightful novel, “A History of Loneliness” is an insightful novel about a dark side of his country’s recent church history, the revelation that pedophile priests have been passed from parish to parish by a hierarchy unwilling to expose the scandals. Boyne describes this tragedy by creating a gripping narrative with a sharp, flowing dialogue.

Father Odran Yates, an honorable Irish priest, has served as the chaplain of a boy’s school for nearly 30 years. He has never abused a student, but early in the novel his former seminary roommate is found guilty of multiple abuses, jailed and put on the sexual offender list for life.

As the scandal emerges, Yates sees trust in the church collapsing around him and observes the scandal’s damaging consequences in the young lives of parishioners. Yates himself becomes a suspect and is treated as a pariah by people who previously respected him. He grows reluctant to appear in public for fear of insults and disapproving stares. Then, Yates himself is arrested for taking the hand of a young boy in a department store in order to help the child find his mother. Despite the charge against him being dropped, he grieves that he can no longer even talk to a child without getting strange looks nor can he have a meeting with the altar boys without a parent present.

Father Yates is a likable protagonist, but partway through the book the reader comes to realize that, though Yates is innocent of child abuse, he is guilty of shoving his awareness of other priest’s crimes off into a remote part of his mind, and thus participated in the Bishops and Cardinals denial or cover ups of the scandalous and hurtful conduct

Boyne superbly describes the smoldering resentment of parishioners as the sex scandals are disclosed and the way Yates is complicit in the crimes because of his silence.

The novel at first read is about unethical and abusive priests, but on a more universal plane it is a parable about the crimes of silence in which we all participate.

Most people are guilty, at some time, of turning away from an unseemly act because they do not want to get involved or want to maintain the status quo. Boyne’s riveting novel may cause the reader to do some personal soul-searching.

Published by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux it is 337 pages that will remain with the reader long after the book is put down.