Odran Yates is bursting with hope and ambition after being propelled into the priesthood by a family tragedy. When Odran enrols in Clonliffe Seminary in the 1970s, priests are held in great regard in Ireland, and he feels as though he is dedicating his life Odran's dedication is entangled with revelations that demolish the Irish people's faith in the Catholic Church forty years later. As he witnesses his friends being tried, his coworkers being imprisoned, and the lives of his young parishioners being devastated, he starts to avoid going out in public for fear of getting dirty looks and remarks. When he grabs a small boy's hand and walks him out of a department shop in search of the boy's mother, he even ends up getting jailed at one point. He is forced to confront the demons that have raged within the church and to admit his own culpability in their spread, both within the institution and his own family, after a family event reopens old scars from his past. The stories we tell ourselves to reconcile with our existence are the subject of A History of Loneliness, a book that is both personal and universal. It reaffirms Boyne's status as one of his generation's most inquisitive storytellers.