A History of Loneliness

February 23, 2015
Boyne (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) explores the tumultuous history of the priesthood in the Irish church. Father Odran Yates narrates from when his mother told him he ought to take vows through the present day. For many years, Odran has taught and cared for the library at Terenure College in Dublin, going about his days in near ignorance of church politics. He is without ambition and often exasperatingly naïve. He insists that he enjoys his life, despite one painfully botched and shameful romantic interest. When string of priests are convicted of sexually harassing young boys in their congregations, Odran pushes away the news for as long as he can, despite increasingly aggressive and pointed public response. Then he tries to return a boy that's been separated from his mother in a department store, and the Garda detain him, accusing Odran of attempting to kidnap the child. When an old roommate resurfaces, Odran must face his own denial and the pain it's caused. The book sags during conversations with formulaically villainous clergymen but is otherwise a quietly enlightening meditation on how the Irish Catholic church has let down its congregations.

December 15, 2014
A priest in Ireland provides a lens on his brethren's sexual abuse of young boys. Best known for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2006), a Holocaust novel for children, Boyne here creates a character who remains stubbornly oblivious as he gets hints of homosexuality and sexual abuse from his youth through his seminary years and as a teacher and parish priest. In a story that jumps back and forth among different periods of his life, Father Odran Yates, the narrator, endures a family tragedy and tries to ignore his sister's early-onset dementia, two of the rare elements in the book untinged by sex. Tom Cardle, his roommate in the seminary and then longtime friend, exposes Odran, at a distance, to sexual desire and then puzzles him as the ordained Tom is too rapidly transferred from one parish to another. Odran becomes a tea server for Pope Paul VI and the short-lived John Paul I during a pointed but implausible interlude in Rome, where he has his libido stirred when he falls hard for a barista. Other Boyne novels-he has written 13 for adults and children-present his take on historical incidents, as this novel does briefly with the 33-day papacy and broadly by putting two characters at the center of Ireland's final unraveling of the complicity of church and police in the sexual abuse scandal. Boyne's strength is dialogue, always sharp and flowing, especially abetted by Irish idiom. His weaknesses here are neon-obvious allusions and a somewhat clunky structure. In between those extremes, he shows a fine sympathy in some of the book's best scenes for the change that good shepherds saw in their flocks, from worshipful respect to loathing. There might have been more art in a subtler take on this Irish horror, but Boyne has conveyed well the message most needed, that silence and denial are heinous crimes as well.

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January 1, 2015

Chaplain at a Dublin boys' school since his ordination, Fr. Odran Yates lives an uncomplicated life. He never doubts his vocation and remains removed from the politics of parish ministry and church administration. After 28 years of quiet stability, however, Yates is forced by the archbishop to take a parish position, substituting for a priest accused of long-term, systematic sexual abuse. The accused cleric himself recommends Yates as his replacement because they were seminary roommates. The tale Yates narrates is a chilling confession of years of emotional distance and self-delusion. In the end, he recognizes a path to some sort of redemption, but will he take it? VERDICT Best known for the YA novel The Boy in Striped Pajamas, Boyne here offers his eighth novel for adults and the first set in his native Ireland. In the person of Father Yates, he unsparingly explores a devastating subject: how the negligence and complicity of clergy and parishioners in Ireland have facilitated sex-scandal cover-ups and misinformation overseen from the highest levels of the Catholic Church. The result reads like a modern existential fable, raising questions that will remain with readers long after they put it down. [See Prepub Alert, 8/11/14.]--John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2014

Adult/YA novelist Boyne is best known for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which has sold six million copies worldwide and inspired a film. In his latest adult novel, priest Odran Yates now hesitates to go outside for fear of public hostility; sexual abuse by priests has left parishioners angry, victims devastated, and many of Odran's colleagues tried or jailed. Now a dark well in Odran's past is opening up, and he must consider his complicity in the crisis that's destroying his Church...and his family.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.