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…