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