‘A History of Loneliness’ by John Boyne

‘A History of Loneliness’ by John Boyne sat in my bookshelf, bought at one junk sale or another, with the ‘to read one day’ intention.

I read the author’s ‘Ladder to the sky’ first, a book I found easy to read, uncomfortable, with a sardonic eye on the challenges of writing, the elusiveness of ideas and how far the main character goes to ‘get his story’. This book is troubling, as a reader I see what the characters in the book don’t. Wilful blindness. Blindness caused by love, by attraction, the fault of the man is ignored as love makes his victims blind. It was a book I happily let go, didn’t want to keep, but it stayed in my mind unexpectedly.

I was on the lookout for something easy to read, and I pulled ‘A History of Loneliness’ from my bookshelf. Oh dear. Yes. Easy to read, gripping, accessible – I devoured it in a few sittings. It’s deeply disturbing. Wilful blindness again a theme, yet this time it borders on complicity. The topic this time abuse in the catholic church. We share the life of its main character, Father Odran Yates, ‘a good man’.

The book starts in 2001, 2006, then moves back to 1980 and 1972 – the story is not told sequential, it jumps about. The young boy, growing up with a fanatically religious mother after his brother and father died; his career is stellar – he joins the seminary and becomes a priest. The reader shares his life – in the seminary, in various positions, in connection with his family.

Is it possible to see what you don’t know? Did I, as reader, only know what was going on because abuse in the Catholic Church has been publicised for years now? My discomfort was raised early, and, while I was held captive by great writing and a gripping storyline, I could not believe the good man’s ignorance. Did he really not see what was going on?

The price of blindness, the culpability of bystanders, how perpetrators can only survive, succeed in causing havoc for years due to the passivity of willfully blind bystanders – it’s a challenging read. Remarkable.

I recommended the book to my mother, who spent her life ignoring what she did not want to see. The book’s end, when abuse was plainly articulated, came as utter surprise to her.  Like the main character, she did not see what was plainly obvious to people who know.

‘We only see what we know’ – this quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe fits the main character, and some readers.

A fascinating book. Well written and easy to read, but not easy to forget. Highly recommended.