CALIFORNIA
The Record
By Julie Najjar
A History of Loneliness
by John Boyne (Doubleday Canada, 384 pages $24.95 trade paperback)
We have heard much about the shocking allegations of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests worldwide over the past several decades, so it was with a sense of trepidation that I approached John Boyne’s latest novel.
“A History of Loneliness” tells the achingly sad story of Odran Yates, a Catholic priest in Dublin as he looks back over his life, from the time he was a young boy in the 1970s up to the present day, when he must face the role he, too, may have played in the vast and far-reaching coverup of sexual abuse by the Roman Catholic Church over the past five decades.
Odran tells how his Irish family went from three to five and back to three again when tragedy struck while he was still a young boy. Seeking consolation, his mother becomes involved in the church, and she tells Odran he has a calling — a vocation to become a priest.
Faced with no better options, he enters the seminary at Conliffe at 17, where he and Tom Cardle become “cellmates” and, by default, best friends.
Tom, unlike Odran, is not cut out for the life of a priest, but he has no choice in the matter. This relationship, and Tom’s subsequent actions, form the basis for Odran’s conflicted feelings as he struggles to stay true to his calling in a world where priests have gone from being respected and revered members of the community to being shunned and looked upon with suspicion and even disgust.
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