John Boyne: ‘I conceived a plan to focus on sexual abuse from four different perspectives’

In early 2021, a few days after my former English teacher in Terenure College, John McClean, was sentenced to 11 years in jail, with three suspended, for the sexual abuse of 23 boys in his care, I published an article in The Irish Times reflecting on the atmosphere of violence and complicity that pervaded the school during my time there in the late 1980s.

A day after that article appeared in print, I presented myself at Terenure Garda station to give a statement about another teacher, one who had sexually assaulted me on multiple occasions when I was a vulnerable, sexually confused teenager. Two detectives interviewed me over three hours. They were incredibly professional in their questioning but also empathetic, cognisant of how difficult it was for me to unburden myself of such personal experiences in front of strangers. As I was leaving, they remarked that I was, in fact, the second person to sit before them that day with a complaint against the same man.

I dwelt on this for a few weeks and because I’ve been a writer since I knew how to hold a pen, I knew what my next subject would be. I had already published a novel in 2014, A History of Loneliness, that explored the child abuse scandals in the Irish church, but I wanted to get deeper inside the issue.

[ John McClean told to rot in hell as past pupils describe how he abused them at Terenure College ]

[ John Boyne: I was abused at Terenure College, but not by John McClean ]

Complicity has been a running theme throughout my fiction. It’s in The Absolutist, where a soldier conceals the brutal murder of an unarmed combatant discovered hiding in an otherwise deserted trench. It’s in All the Broken Places, where the daughter of a concentration camp commandant recalls her family’s history during the Holocaust. And it returns in my new novel Water, the first of a sequence of four novellas to be published over the next two years, collectively titled The Elements.

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By looking at abuse in the round, from four different standpoints, I hope to contribute something to our understanding of why these heinous crimes are committed in the first place

I’ve written a lot of long books. At 203,000 words, my most popular novel, The Heart’s Invisible Furies is 2,000 words longer than Moby-Dick. My most celebrated, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, is my shortest, at a mere 47,000. Some of my favourite works of fiction are less than 200 pages long and can be read across a day or two. Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey, in which a priest becomes interested in the lives of those who fell to their deaths from a collapsing bridge. John Wyndham’s Chocky, a disturbing tale about an imaginary friend. Irmgaud Keun’s After Midnight, set in Frankfurt in 1937 on the day that Hitler came to town. But I’d never written one myself and, always up for a challenge, I decided I’d go for broke and write four.

Water, Earth, Fire and Air.

The four elements that classicists and philosophers consider to be the building blocks of the universe itself, hydrating us, feeding us, keeping us warm, and allowing us to breathe, but also, when provoked, tools for our potential destruction.

I conceived a plan to focus on sexual abuse from four different perspectives. Short, 40,000-word books, each a self-contained story, but allowing a minor character from one to become the narrator of the next. Presenting the concept to my publisher, I was unsure whether he would consider it a commercial proposition but, to my delight, he encouraged me to pursue the idea. And now, a couple of years later, they’re ready for publication.

Water, the first of the sequence, features a middle-aged woman who relocates to an island off Galway to consider her part in an experience that has destroyed not only her family, but the families of many others too.

Earth, which follows in May 2024, is narrated by a young Irish sportsman who, along with his teammates, are brought to trial accused of raping a young woman and bragging about it afterwards in a series of WhatsApp messages.

Fire (November 2024) has proved the most difficult and emotionally draining to write, as it’s narrated by a paedophile, a female paedophile, intent on damaging the lives of 14-year-old boys.

And, finally, Air (May 2025) will bring the cycle full circle, employing the voice of a victim.

[ Gardaí send 13 files to DPP after 130 ‘contacts’ over Spiritan sexual abuse ]

A good novelist writes without judgment, allowing their characters to form on the page with all their flaws and qualities intact, encouraging the reader to form their own opinions. If we succeed, they should provoke ambivalent feelings as we recognise societal failures and our part in them.

I’ve been accused in the past of sympathising with malevolent characters, a lazy, reductive, and intellectually vapid reading of my work. Time and again, I’ve presented terrible people in human ways to encourage readers to recognise that monsters, to appropriate the title of a recent documentary, are hiding in plain sight. And so I’ve examined Nazis from the perspective of family members who loved them, questioning how a man who treats his children with natural affection can spend his workday engaged in genocide. I’ve written about priests who seek out troubled children in order to satisfy their own perverse desires. I’ve explored the behaviour of online polemicists who claim to be fighting on the right side of history while doing all they can to destroy the lives, careers and mental health of anyone who disagrees with them. To put it plainly, I write about the bad guys but draw enormous, illuminated arrows and point them towards the halos they wear.

Writing these four novellas has been the most interesting, challenging and, at times, upsetting task I’ve undertaken since my publishing career began 31 years ago. It’s taken me back to times I would rather forget, people I would rather have never encountered, and experiences I wish I had never endured. But it has also proved hugely rewarding as it’s allowed me to explore my own life, and the moments that have affected it, with more clarity than I have before.

[ All the Broken Places by John Boyne: A sequel with shortcomings ]

[ John Boyne: ‘Would The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas be published today? Absolutely not’ ]

A detailed investigation into the man who abused me when I was a teenager was conducted over the last two years by An Garda Síochána. The book of evidence was presented to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who went forward with a prosecution. I received regular communications from both Tusla, the agency dedicated to the safeguarding of children, and my Garda liaison, who kept me updated with every new development in the case. My abuser was brought to court, charged, entered a “not guilty” plea, and a trial date was set for March 25th. Two months ago, however, before he could face his many accusers, he died. Those of us who suffered at his hands are therefore left with a sense that justice has not been served. We have not been given the opportunity to stand in a witness box, look him in the eye, and explain how his actions affected our lives. While I was having a drink with my younger sister the weekend I learned of his death, she asked me how I felt about it.

“I’m fine,” I said, not wanting to worry her unnecessarily. “I don’t think it affected me too badly.”

I can still see her looking away and shaking her head, for she knows me as well as anyone alive.

“I don’t think you even realise, John, how badly it affected you,” she said.

That’s a line that will, I think, remain with me for many years.

And perhaps it’s why I hope The Elements, beginning with Water, will be the most important book I’ve written. I’m of an age to write it, with a great career, a happy home life, daily creative challenges and absolutely no fear of the consequences of speaking out on subjects I feel passionately about. By looking at abuse in the round, from four different standpoints, I hope to contribute something to our understanding of why these heinous crimes are committed in the first place and explain why so many of us continue to fight for the rights of vulnerable children, standing up to those who would indoctrinate, groom or abuse them. For they remain the most vulnerable members of society, their entire futures capable of being destroyed by the inhumanity of those entrusted with their care.

Water, the first volume of The Elements, is published by Doubleday. Earth, Fire, and Air will follow at six-monthly intervals from May 2024 to November 2025.