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"I did not become ashamed of being Irish until I was well into the middle years of my life."Last year I read The Heart's Invisible Furies and A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne and loved them both. I am very happy to say that A History of Loneliness did not disappoint at all. As always, John Boyne’s gift in creating authentic, fully developed characters shines through. I really liked Father Odran Yates, and enjoyed seeing the world through his quiet, almost passive point of view. The author write...
John Boyne is masterful in his writing, and this book is definitely no exception. He manages to draw you into his wonderful story immediately, and with total ease. This book isn't as amazing as "The Hearts invisible Furies" but it's still Boyne at his best.This particular book centres around the Catholic church, and abuse that went on there. I felt so much heartache for Odran, I really did, and the way in which he holds himself entirely responsible for the sins of others, is painful to read.If J...
I think I want to marry John Boyne when I grow up. He must leave the most delicious notes on the counter when he runs out of the house. At this point, I’m utterly fascinated by his way with words. This book was the third of his that I treated myself to within little more than a year; it was no easy story, this time, but it worked its magic nonetheless. Of course it would. It’s John Boyne.(John, are you out there? I love a Guinness with my oysters and will gladly take you out to Matt the Thresher...
Very easily a 5★ from me. Odran Yates is a sensitive and compelling character dealing with private guilt, public betrayal by his church and his fellow priests, and his own innermost feelings of love and loss.I’m linking you to Eileen’s review because frankly, she says it better than I ever could: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
A History of Loneliness focuses on the life of Odran Yates, an Irish priest caught at the centre of the child abuse scandal that devastated the Catholic Church. It reads like an extended examination of conscience with Odran looking back on his life, trying to determine if he is as innocent as he has presumed himself to be.”I did not become ashamed of being Irish until I was well into the middle years of my life.”The narrative transports us to different times in Odran’s life - his childhood in Du...
The third John Boyne book I have read, and it has proven to be another excellent, gripping story. Both Ireland and the Catholic Church are foreign to me, so I learned a great deal from reading this. The process to become a priest was much longer and more complicated than I had realised. I suppose I had never really thought about it before.Father Odran Yates is a brilliant character - I don't think I have ever simultaneously felt such compassion and anger toward someone, real or fiction. I reall...
The novel that kept me thinking about while I was not reading it .....
Boyne’s narrative reads effortlessly like floating on a surface of a deep lake with scarcely a ripple of a wave. I was cocooned in a place of comfort by our main protagonist, Father Odran Yates, an Irish priest. As a reader you become entangled in his innocuous shroud of naiveté that he persists on holding on to. You slowly realize that the smooth lake and the cocoon is prescribed submission and privy to an unimaginable deception. Boyne through his fictional account tells about sexual abuse of