A history of loneliness book review
A history of loneliness book review
The boy in the striped pyjamas book review.
A History of Loneliness: A Novel
Very early in John Boyne’s latest novel, A History of Loneliness, we are given the measure of Father Odran Yates, and it is the man himself who reveals it.
His second sentence to us is, “I might start with the evening I showed up at my sister’s home for dinner and she had no recollection of issuing the invitation; I believe that was the night when she first showed signs of losing her mind.”
He describes going to Hannah’s house for dinner almost a year since last being there after her husband, Kristian, died at only 42.
It is just Hannah and her shy, awkward 16-year-old son, Jonas, there; the angry, older son, Aidan, has moved to London.
Odran describes the painful evening and how his beloved younger sister moves back and forth between lucidity and confused non sequiturs.
And even as Jonas catches him on his way out and tries to articulate his concerns for his mother — during the same instance that Odran has as