John Boyne: ‘The Catholic priesthood blighted my youth and the youth of people like me’
Over the course of my writing life, I’ve often been asked
why I don’t set my novels in Ireland. To this question, I had a stock
reply: that I didn’t want to write about my own country until I had a
story to tell. Now, having written a book that takes the subject of
child abuse in the Irish Catholic church as its theme, I wonder if that
answer was entirely honest. I’ve spent the past two years recalling experiences from my
childhood and teenage years that I would rather forget, reliving events
that should never have taken place and recreating through fiction,
moments that seemed small at the time but that I’ve come to realise
caused me great damage. Which makes me think that the real reason
I never wrote about Ireland until now is explained in the opening
sentence of my novel:
