IRELAND
Toronto Star

By: Elizabeth Warkentin Special to the Star, Published on Sat Feb 21 2015

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…