A History of Loneliness: A Novel

John Boyne

Feb 2015 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About this ebook

Bestselling author John Boyne's A History of Loneliness tells the riveting narrative of an honorable Irish priest who finds the church collapsing around him at a pivotal moment in its history.

Propelled into the priesthood by a family tragedy, Odran Yates is full of hope and ambition. When he arrives at Clonliffe Seminary in the 1970s, it is a time in Ireland when priests are highly respected, and Odran believes that he is pledging his life to "the good."

Forty years later, Odran's devotion is caught in revelations that shatter the Irish people's faith in the Catholic Church. He sees his friends stand trial, colleagues jailed, the lives of young parishioners destroyed, and grows nervous of venturing out in public for fear of disapproving stares and insults. At one point, he is even arrested when he takes the hand of a young boy and leads him out of a department store looking for the boy's mother.

But when a family event opens wounds from his past, he is forced to confront the demons that have raged within the church, and to recognize his own complicity in their propagation, within both the institution and his own family.

A novel as intimate as it is universal, A History of Loneliness is about the stories we tell ourselves to make peace with our lives. It confirms Boyne as one of the most searching storytellers of his generation.

Ratings and reviews

John Boyne, one of my favorite authors, imaginatively explores how one Catholic priest comes to terms with the church's sex scandals and his own career -- in a very believable way. Odran Yates first learns of his "calling" to the priesthood when, after a family tragedy, his newly-devout mother tells him he is destined to be a priest. A dutiful, faithful, and patient Dublin boy - Odran heads off to seminary in the 1970s, a time when priests were universally respected in Ireland. There, he meets his roommate Tom, and begins a friendship that will last for 40 years. During his years of religious service, Odran works briefly at the Vatican before spending decades happily serving at a Catholic boys school. That is until the Catholic Church assigns him to work as a parish priest, serving a church formerly served by his friend, Tom. As stories of sexual abuse begin to surface, Boyne looks at how these stories were handled by within the church and how it was that priests managed to continue this criminal behavior, with the overt knowledge and support of the church hierarchy. And Odran witnesses first hand the seismic shift that happens in Ireland -- where priests once considered trustworthy role models are suddenly demonized. Like all Boyne's books, this one is beautifully-written, full of multi-dimensional characters, and looks at an important universal theme --the impact of how we all sometimes tell ourselves stories that make us feel better, but may not necessarily be true.

About the author

John Boyne is the author of numerous works of fiction, including The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a young adult novel that became an international bestseller and was made into an award-winning film. His books have been translated into forty-six languages, and he is the recipient of two Irish Book Awards, the Bistro Book of the Year, and numerous international awards. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.