This novel feels like an angry dedication towards Ireland's view or discouragement on Homosexuality.
Spanning almost 70 years of Cyril Avery (who definitely is not a REAL Avery)'s Life which includes his biological mother, adopted parents and his own, the novel is almost hilarious and almost sad.

John Boyne definitely knows how to speak about unspeakable. Funny narration, great characters and a lovely story, except that it was a bit long for me.

The fact I have had this on my 'to-read' pile for almost a year in one way or another proves my aversion to door-stoppers like this; yet the end result is still a very pleasurable one at the hands of Boyne. It's once more a very different book from this eclectic talent – for the first time I am aware of, he has a made a very homosexy book. That's not to say it's strictly for gay men, and nor can you really reduce this to being 'about' Ireland, for it is a very personal look at one man in a saga-like setting, and all the swings and roundabouts he faces make for a thoroughly entertaining read. Only now and again did it ever feel like going off the rails, and being too long – this is one huge chunk of book that is hugely worth the effort. It has heart – it's about institutional betrayal of family, and bite – for it has a lot to say that Irish patriots would grumble into their Guinness over, but it's a very memorable entertainment.

As always I do things back to front, John Boyne is famously known for writing ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’,I have not got round to reading this book but have watched the film adaptation and found it heart-breaking. Anyway on to his newest book on the market. This book is delightful, laugh out loud hilarious, an emotional rollercoaster and you will no doubt fall in love with Cyril Avery.

The story is told from our protagonist Cyril Avery, the story starts off when he is still in the womb and how he came to be put up for adoption and then every 7 years thereafter. The whole book follows Cyril throughout his whole life and the struggles he comes across living in Dublin in the 1950’s and coming to terms with his identity and sexuality.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I adored Cyril Avery, he had this awkwardness about him, and seemed to get in some truly awful situations. For him growing up was anything but ordinary, he was adopted by ‘The Avery’s’ but was continuously told that he wasn’t a real Avery and never would be. With his strange adoptive parents, Cyril takes everything in his stride until he meets Julian Woodbead and realises that he might just be attracted to boys.

John Boyne’s writing was breath-taking and I was enchanted from the start – I slowly read this book as I didn’t want it to end. The characters in this book were great and all had amazing personalities. It also shows how homophobic the country was back in the 1950’s and how people were scared to ‘come out’ for fear of being attacked and disowned by family members.

This book does delve in to Irish politics and was something that I had not read before but due to my lack of knowledge was not something that interested me.

This story told by Cyril Avery is about Love, Relationships, Politics, Religion, Violence and Identity.

I rated this 4.25 out of 5 stars

We start in 1945 in a church in rural Cork, where the priest makes 16 year old Catherine Goggin stand in front of the congregation and condemned for being a whore. The entire parish is told she is pregnant and the priest casts her out and tells her to leave the village and never return. She goes to Dublin and has her son adopted. The rest of the book spans Cyrils life all the way to 2015. We see his relationship with his adoptive parents (Cyril Avery is not a real Avery), meeting Julian Woodbead at 7 years old and making a lifelong connection, to struggling with his sexuality in an Ireland where being gay is illegal and dangerous. This book was just amazing! It made me laugh out loud several times and it made me cry too. Cyril is a complex character, there’s times where I liked him and times where I loathed him but I did always find myself rooting for him. It’s poignant, sweet, a little bit heartbreaking and thought provoking. It’s an emotional roller coaster but one that doesn’t feel like a forced one. The ups and downs of this book seems natural and not exaggerated or forced for the sake of creating a reaction. One of my favourites so far this year.

The Heart's Invisible Furies was my first encounter with Boyne's writing. I didn't know what to expect, if I'm being honest I requested the eARC mostly because of the cover and the title.

Don't you just love it when you are pleasantly surprised?

This novel sprawls over decades and over almost six hundred pages. At its core, we have Cyril Avery, a boy, later a man coming to terms with his sexuality and struggling to find a way to live in Catholic, old-fashioned Ireland and later, in Netherlands and the USA.

This novel was so incredibly well written, it's a delight. While reading it, I experienced a variety of emotions: anger, delight, amusement and joy. I may have wept a little bit.

So do yourself a favour: read this book!

‘I’ve spent so much time pushing the boat out that I forgot to jump on and now it’s out beyond the harbour on the high seas, but it’s very nice to look at.’

Coming to the end of his epic retelling of Cyril Avery’s lifetime, John Boyne indirectly reveals his philosophy for storytelling through two characters having a discussion about Jeffrey Archer:

‘Have you ever read Jeffrey Archer?’

‘I haven’t,’ I admitted.

‘Oh, he’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘He tells a story, and that’s what I like. Does this fella tell a story? He doesn’t spend twenty pages describing the colour of the sky?’

To his credit, Boyne can spin a good yarn himself and this ‘his most ambitious work to date’ is a massive achievement. From birth to death, we hear the story of Cyril Avery, an illegitimate child who grows up into a homosexual man struggling to make sense of a hostile world and in particular a hostile home nation. In between, Boyne treats us to light-hearted and dark moments in equal measure. Cameos from Brendan Behan, Éamon De Valera, Charles Haughey and even Nelson’s Pillar place the novel in it’s context as Cyril stumbles through the decades.

This book finds Boyne in impressive writing form with many memorable set-pieces featuring throughout the 592 pages. The opening chapter alone is an example of masterful storytelling as a fallen woman is ejected from her church, family, parish and county in one fell swoop and in the most public and brutal of manners.

Her son emerges as the story’s main character and he grows up in a world filled to the brim with love and hatred. Ireland is not an easy place for Cyril to grow up and be who he was born to be. Dublin and Ireland is full of ‘good-hearted innocents, miserable bigots, adulterous husbands, conniving churchmen, paupers who received no help from the State, and millionaires who sucked the lifeblood from it.’

When Cyril eventually flees the country in search of the freedom that he needs to grow and truly find himself, others cannot understand the place where he has come from. One character remarks that ‘it sounds like a backward place. A people with no empathy for anyone.’ Where ‘priests decide everything.’

The chilling truth is that this is the truth. Ireland, amongst other things, is the historic home to the Magdalene laundries, countless sexual abuse scandals within the Church, the horror of the Tuam babies and decades of oppression towards homosexuality. There is no hiding place from these facts and John Boyne brilliantly sheds a light on the dark side of the Emerald Isle in this novel.

‘They have no compassion, do they?’ I asked. ‘They talk about Christianity and yet it’s just a concept to them, not a way of life at all.

Above all else though, this is Cyril’s story and from birth to death we enjoy him as an honest and innocent character simply trying to find happiness and love in a cruel world.

Would I recommend this book to a friend?

Yes. This novel ticks many boxes. It has elements of truth, humour, sadness and social commentary. John Boyne fans will love it as will anyone else who enjoys a good story.

The corrupt Catholic Church has an unpardonable, hypocritical and deplorable history mired in horrors such as support for fascist regimes like Spain, Germany, Italy, its oppositon to liberation theology whilst buttressing the power of the tyrannical dictators of South and Central America and its brutal unspeakable history in Ireland. John Boyne embodies the heartbreaking history of Ireland and the Catholic Church in the post war years from 1945 to 2015 through the ordinary life and times of Cyril Avery. It is ambitious, moving, unforgettable and epic in scope, incorporating real life characters and events, and documents the ground breaking shifts in Irish attitudes and culture. It begins with a vicious and hypocritical priest publicly denouncing the pregnant Catherine as a whore in public, with the support of her family and expelling her. Her son, Cyril, is adopted by Roger and Maud Avery, who inform Cyril that he is not family, simply a family tenant for the period of 18 years. Cyril lives in Dublin, Amsterdam and the city of New York.

Cyril comes to realise that he is gay in a society that condemns and criminalises him, ensuring that he is fearful and secretive whilst igniting an unbearable self hatred within him. The sanctimonious, misogynist, and judgemental catholic church refers to being gay as a mortal sin, sanctioning punitive communities who relish in gossip that shred lives and reputations with impunity. The most important people in Cyril's life are childhood friend, Julian Woodbead who he meets when he is 7 years old and the dedicated and insightful Dutch docter, Bastiaan, encountered in Amsterdam who views Irish attitudes with bemusement. There is much sex and the deployment of the blackest of comedy and humour in the horrors, misfortunes and trials that befall Cyril through the years. This is a coming of age story, an emotional search for a sense of identity, home and country. Boyne's justifiable rage at a church and nation that inflicts such harrowing damage to its citizens is something I wholeheartedly share in spades. A Catholic Church bought to its knees by abuse and scandals is a welcome progressive development in Irish history, the people voting for gay marriage even more so. However, it barely atones for what happens to Cyril and others like him.

This is a savagely funny and entertaining read with a emotional and compelling narrative with such heart. The prose is beautifully expressive, vital and vivid. The character of Cyril is brilliantly developed to chime with Irish history. There are perhaps some questionable coincidences but they do not prevent the enjoyment of the story. I particularly loved the way Boyne celebrates the kindness and tolerance of ordinary people juxtaposed with a country ill served by corrupt, self serving politicians. An exceptionally brilliant book that I loved and cannot recommend highly enough. Thanks to Random House Transworld for an ARC.

I have tead quite a few of John Boyn's novels and enjoy his retlling of historical stories such as the Romanov's in The house of Special Purpose and Mutiny (about the Mutiny on the Bounry). This is definitely his most personal book although not in any way autobiographical. It is as much a story of modern Ireland as it is about the main character, Cyril Avery, and his family and friends, who are all beautifully written. There is lots of black humour as a balance to many sad and poignant story arcs. I would definitely recommend.

This is the first novel by John Boyne I've read since 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' and it is a terrific one. The story spans the life of one man, Cyril Avery, who was adopted by a wealthy couple after his young unmarried Irish mother was forced to leave her small rural home in disgrace. It was the first paragraph in the book which drew me into reading it. One of the best ever.

Cyril's life is far from ordinary and there are moments of heartbreak and well as laugh out loud ones. Cyril is gay at a time when it was very dangerous to be one and early on in the story his young mother witnesses the violent death of a young gay man who offered her a home when she first arrived, heavily pregnant, in Dublin, This sets the tone of the book as Cyril himself, growing up in an unconventional home where his adoptive father keeps telling him that he is not a 'real Avery', becomes obsessed with his best friend, the very heterosexual Julian.

As one might expect from a life spanning seventy years there is a large cast of characters but some play a stronger part than others and all are believable. I did feel that the ending was rather too pat but that didn't take away any of the enjoyment of the rest of the book which was unputtdownable. Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for the opportunity to read and review The Heart's Invisible Furies.

Enjoyed this book . Some laugh out loud moments as well as some very sad . The life of Cyril Avery was a complex one with all its ups and downs . However through it all he never gave up. Life in Ireland in the 1940's was difficult for Cyril but add to that being gay in a strict Catholic society was nightmarish. Some very strong and strange characters. The book is one of great losses, great loves , despair , hope , and how society looks at those who do not fit the mold. The phrase " my adoptive mother and father " was a bit overused. Recommend read if you like a somewhat unconventional read .Thanks netgalley. Great read.

I don’t know where to start. Ostensibly this is the story of one man’s life, a very ordinary man in many ways but as we all are, also very extraordinary. Cyril Avery is the son of Catherine, a country girl, cast out of her family and the church, literally thrown out by the hair on her head, by a ghastly priest. She is young, pregnant and penniless. She makes her way to Dublin, has her baby who is adopted by the Averys and bought up in a most unusual fashion. The book follows his life, Cyril is a gay man and his experiences through his early life, school and his first work experiences are at times horrific and at times really funny. This book also, via Cyril’s life, follows the history of the Catholic church in Ireland in the 20th century. Homosexuals were treated so incredibly appallingly, not just in Ireland I know, but in this case, we are talking about Ireland and any other country where the church runs the state and that is very clearly what was happening there.

I found so much depth in this novel, layer upon layer of story. It loops around, people crop up in various places over time, Cyril’s people appear and disappear and then reappear in his life, but that really is what happens to people generally, you have a friend, you see them a lot, then not so much and then you find each other again. The novel travels to Amsterdam, on to New York and then carries you back to Ireland.

This is a big book, not just because the story is so big and twisty turny good, Cyril’s is a big life but also a quiet life. I fell completely in love with this novel. It does move slowly and carefully but like all of John Boyne’s novels the satisfaction of reading such gorgeous writing of finding so many treasures of little stories within the massive story – well it just makes me almost go weepy! And, if like I did, you attend a Catholic funeral while you are reading this book, you will just look at all the rituals and wonder and weep that these lovely ceremonies come with a history of bigotry and injustice, and that will be very challenging for some readers. I hope it sells millions of copies!

Heart-breaking and hilarious in equal measure, Cyril Avery (although not a real Avery!) is a narrator whose voice and story will stay with you for a long time. From the opening pages we are ushered into a world which isn't the one we would wish upon the characters but through which we must watch them navigate a troubled, rocky, complicated but ultimately beautiful journey. Whilst a larger than average book this none the less reads very quickly and you will find yourself reading 'just one more page' of the beautifully written and compelling narrative until you sadly reach the end feeling slightly bereft. I will definitely be investigating more of this author's books.

Starting in 1940s Ireland and running to the present day, The Heart's Invisible Furies is the story - cradle to grave - of Cyril Avery. Even before his birth, it's made clear that he's not wanted by society - his unmarried mother is shamed in front of her family and neighbours by the village priest, physically thrown out of the church and told in no uncertain terms to leave town and never come back! As an adopted child and later a homosexual man, Cyril is constantly made to feel an outsider, unwanted and unloved.

Given a home by an odd emotion-less couple, Cyril is deprived of affection, constantly told he isn't a 'real Avery' by his adoptive father and generally treated rather like a decorative piece of furniture. It's no surprise therefore that when he meets charismatic youngster Julian, Cyril is instantly infatuated and the seeds are sown for an on/off lifetime friendship. As he grows into manhood, Cyril comes to acknowledge that he's gay, again putting himself outside society's norms (at least for 1960s Ireland), forcing him to lead a double life, hiding his true self and ultimately leading to a foolish act which forces him to flee Ireland.

This latest work by John Boyne is a wonderful, sweeping epic spanning seventy years. Although it deals with many 'issues', this is the tale of one particular man's life, but a life inextricably bound up with Ireland's own story - from the tyrannical role played by the church in the 40s and 50s, and the degrading of anyone who doesn't fit within the accepted norms, to the liberal attitude of today. Throughout Cyril's life, from IRA outrages to mingling with politicians and literary figures, he seems to have been involved in, or on the periphery of, major events.
The book opens dramatically with a scene that, with its echoes of Hester Prynne's shaming in The Scarlet Letter, feels more like something from 17th century New England than 20th century Europe. Although I've read much about the near absolute control held over people's lives by the Catholic Church in Ireland, I was still stunned that such a scene could have taken place not that long ago!
From there, the story leaps forward in bursts, picking up Cyril's story at seven year intervals, each marking a significant point in his life, as he struggles to define himself (he's certainly not a 'real Avery', as his adoptive father never fails to point out!), and to find acceptance and love. His choices aren't always the best but it does feel that he's trying to be honest and do what he feels is right - the consequences though are too often tragic.

Telling the story in the first person, Boyne uses dialogue to both further the story and shed insight on characters' emotions. I particularly loved the exchanges between Cyril and the women in his life, which capture their warmth and playfulness of their relationships; I actually thought at one point that his mother might steal the show from him completely, with her talk of elderly ladies ogling their gym instructor! The structure still allows the reader to know things which Cyril doesn't, and characters appear time and again without Cyril realising their significance to his story; it's cleverly done, and doesn't feel like too great a coincidence but I did find myself urging Cyril to ask just the right question that would reveal so much.

I read a review e-copy so didn't realise the length - just over 600 pages - till I was searching out links for this review, but I loved every bit and wouldn't want to cut a single page. It's full of everything from joy to despair, and I can't believe anyone could read it and not be moved.

This one just didn’t work for me. Boyne has dedicated the book to John Irving, a pretty dangerous thing to do if he’s trying to emulate Irving’s sweeping stories of lives lived on the outside, as Irving is a hard act to follow and Boyne doesn’t measure up to him. This picaresque – and I have to admit that I rarely get on with the picaresque – tale narrates the life of Cyril Avery, born to an unmarried teenage girl and subsequently adopted by a wealthy but distant couple in Dublin in the 1940s. Conflicted by his homosexuality, we follow Avery throughout his life and travels over the next 70 years. A blend of fact and fiction with real life characters next to fictional ones, Boyne gives us a panoramic portrait of a changing Ireland, whilst exploring the eternal Irish themes of bigotry both within and outside the Church, intolerance and prejudice. With far too many coincidences and some pretty unlikely characters along the way, I found my attention wandering and remained unengaged throughout. Disappointing.

I am a huge John Boyne fan, so was really excited about receiving an advance copy of this new offering. As always, the language and structure are amazing, unfortunately it was the storyline itself that failed to grab me on this occasion. No getting away from the fact however that this is a quality read - just didn't float my personal boat I'm afraid.

Ireland 1945. Catherine is 16, unmarried and pregnant. She is chased away from her village from a priest during mass in front of the whole congregation and determined to start a new life in Dublin. The baby, however, will have to be up for adoption, a loving couple will give him a better start in life than a fallen woman. Thus, baby Cyril arrives at the Averies’. Maud and Charles are not especially cordial, but they care for him and in Julian he finds a friend for his life. Even though the circumstances of his upbringing are much better than expected in the first place, Cyril’s life is not meant to be easy: already as a young teenager he realises that he is much more interested in the boys around him than in the girls – an impossibility in Catholic Ireland. Will he ever be able to find real love? Or didn’t he already find it in his best friend Julian?

John Boyne’s novel is a documentary of the 20th century and the development of morals in Catholic European countries. From the very beginning with strict rules which were much more important than the individual’s suffering, over the 60s and 70s with free love and the detachment from all moral considerations, to the 80s and the uncontrollable and unpredictable virus which threatened the world and made people think over their behaviour until our time where – at least in the novel – new ways of understanding the concepts of family and belonging have formed. The protagonist Cyril is strong enough to lead the reader through the times and to overcome obstacles with his gentle and open-minded manners and attitude towards life. He is simply lovable, still at times, you pity and feel sympathy for him because luck does not really seem to be on his side.

Apart from the plot which I found quite interesting since you get an exemplary insight into what homosexuals had to go through in the 20s century, it is Boyne’s style of writing which makes this novel stand out. Sometimes, you could just laugh out loud, e.g. when Cyril explains how his adoptive parents decided on his name: “They had named me Cyril for a spaniel they’d once owned and loved.” (pos. 875) or when he recollects how his father explains him about the birds and the bees (which is just not suitable for any quotation even though it is hilarious). Boyne has quite a limited set of characters considering the number of pages of the novel, they reappear, meet again and again, at times it seemed as if there were maybe too many coincidences to believe it, but even nevertheless it all fit together well and finished in a round and complete ending.

Admittedly, I was occasionally reminded of Hanya Yanagihara’s novel “A little life”, in both novels we find a homosexual as protagonist who has to struggle all his life due to his sexual orientation, societal standards and expectations and who is highly sensitive and perceptive for other people’s feelings and emotions. Yet, the novels are quite different. Where I could feel physical pain in Yanagihara’s, I enjoyed the light tone of Boyne’s novel and the fact that he manages to tell a serious and sometimes arduous story in such a light, amusing way.

In this truly epic journey we follow the life of Cyril Avery, and discover who and why he is. It's a fascinating read, and although I didn't always like Cyril, I really felt for him as he faced difficult life events. And by the end I really felt that I knew him and had great affection for him.
An eye opening account of how difficult life was for a gay man born in 1945 Ireland, and often horrifying in the level of bigotry that he encountered.
This is one of the most moving books I have read in a long time. A definite recommend.

I'm a huge fan of John Boyne's writing. Although probably best known for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, he's also written Crippen, This House is Haunted, A History of Loneliness and many more. What links his books is the sheer quality of the writing, what sets them apart is they are all so different. He's such a versatile writer.

I understand that Boyne has avoided writing about his native Ireland in the past but he did venture there in A History of Loneliness, his last novel. However, in The Heart's Invisible Furies he places Ireland at the very heart of the story and doesn't hold back. At the end there is a note which finishes with a comment that this is considered to be his most ambitious work to date and I would most definitely agree with that.

The book tells the story of Cyril Avery (not a real Avery, as his adoptive parents keep reminding him) almost from conception to the age of 70. Cyril is a bit hapless and seems to lurch from one disaster to another but there is also a real sense of sadness for the reader. Cyril is homosexual in a country that can barely imagine such a thing, let alone tolerate it. He struggles to deal with his feelings and longs to be free of his shackles. The influence of the Catholic Church is in no doubt here throughout this book.

There is some truly fantastic writing. I laughed out loud many times and I have to quote a couple of extracts because it's just inspired writing.

"....and as he turned his head away he noticed me sitting outside and offered an apologetic wave, four of his fingers dancing despondently in the air like an imprisoned pianist forced to play one of Chopin's more depressing sonatas from memory."

" 'Can I help you?' asked Maude, turning to her with all the warmth of Lizzie Borden dropping in to say goodnight to her parents."

Cyril is a great protagonist. Sometimes I just wanted to shake my head at him, other times I was rooting for him. But I liked him immensely. He's a good guy, mostly a victim of his circumstances.

As the story commenced and I had almost 600 pages of reading ahead of me I did briefly wonder if this would be the one book by John Boyne that wouldn't quite hit the spot for me but after a slightly slow start I was absolutely engrossed.

The Heart's Invisible Furies is one epic tale of a life with many ups and downs. There are some amazing coincidences in the story but instead of making me think it was a bit unrealistic, I actually loved how it all came together. Boyne is unflinching in his searing depiction of his country and its people. The book covers many important events such as 9/11 and the referendum in 2015 to legalise gay marriage. It's Cyril's memoir, his life. I absolutely adored it. There are some authors who can do no wrong for me and Boyne is one of them.

Having read Boyne's heartrending novel “A History of Loneliness” a little over two years ago, I was extremely keen to read this new novel which is certainly his most ambitious publication thus far. At over six hundred pages “The Heart's Invisible Furies” follows the life of Cyril Avery from his dramatic birth in 1945 to 2015. It's a novel that's truly epic in scope as it incorporates significant moments in history from the 1966 IRA bombing of Nelson's Column in Dublin to the recent referendum to permit same-sex marriage in Ireland. Boyne captures climatic shifts in societal attitudes over this seventy year period. For those who experience Irish life from day to day and suffer terribly from the constrictive ideologies of its domineering institutions, it feels as if nothing will ever change. As one character puts it: “Ireland is a backward hole of a country run by vicious, evil-minded, sadistic priests and government so in thrall to the collar that it’s practically led around on a leash.” However, surveying the societal shifts over a full lifetime through Cyril's point of view, the reader is able to see how things do slowly change with time especially through brave individuals who make themselves heard.

The novel begins in 1945 when the local priest discovers that Cyril's sixteen year-old unmarried mother Catherine Goggin is pregnant. He publicly denounces her, physically throws her out of the church and orders her to leave their small farming town in West Cork. Inexperienced and nearly penniless, she bravely makes her way to Dublin where she decides to give Cyril up for adoption after giving birth to him. Cyril is raised in the home of Charles and Maude Avery who are two very different, charismatic and highly original characters. Charles is a wealthy and powerful businessman with many vices including gambling, womanizing and alcoholism. Maude is an irascible reclusive chain-smoking writer who produces a new novel every few years and delights in how few copies get sold “for she considered popularity in the bookshops to be vulgar.” In a hilariously memorable scene recounting her only public appearance, she reads her entire novel to the audience without stopping until everyone leaves the bookshop in exhaustion. Although these characters are an absolute delight to read about, they make frightful parents treating Cyril more as a lodger than a son and continuously reminding him that he's “not really an Avery.”

Each section of the novel leaps forward seven years showing Cyril’s development and struggles throughout his entire life. It’s speculated that our lives dramatically change in seven year periods of time. The philosopher and mystic Rudolf Steiner hypothesized that there are significant changes in human development in seven year cycles that are linked to the astrological chart. Scientists say that every cell in the human body is replaced every seven years meaning that biologically we become completely new human beings. One of the most touching things about “The Heart's Invisible Furies” and why it justifies its length is how it shows how orphaned Cyril is not limited to one set path in existence, but has multiple opportunities to grow and change over the course of his life. Sometimes he makes poor decisions and other times he realizes his full potential over these seven year strides. The priest who banished Catherine and her child borne out of wedlock condemned them to a life of shame and misery. Although they both periodically suffer throughout their lives, they survive and flourish. Their story is a great testament to how the human spirit overcomes the narrow-minded dictates of society.

Through Cyril’s perspective the novel gives a personal view of some the most horrific social and historic events in his lifetime including fatal homophobic beatings, a teenager kidnapped and mutilated by IRA members, concentration camp survivors, the sex trade in Amsterdam, the stigma of AIDS and its early epidemic in NYC and the September 11th attacks. These subjects are treated seriously and sensitively portrayed. However, the novel is nowhere as bleak as this list makes it sound. It’s often a very comic story with vibrant scenes and memorably idiosyncratic characters. Boyne uses a satirical wit and Dickensian social eye when writing about characters such as Mr Denby-Denby, a flamboyant civil servant, or Mary-Margaret Muffet, a conservative uptight Catholic girl, or Miss Anna Ambrosia who gets monthly visits from her “Auntie Jemima” and dismisses Edna O’Brien’s books as “pure filth.” These characters brilliantly reflect the social attitudes of their respective time periods and show up their ludicrous ingrained systems of belief. It’s moving how many characters reappear periodically throughout the years and Boyne shows how they either change or obstinately stick with their provincial points of view.

One of the most important aspects of the novel is Cyril’s homosexuality and the severe difficulty of growing up as a gay man in Ireland during his lifetime. Cyril develops an early love and lust for his boyhood friend Julian. But where heterosexual Julian can be flagrantly sexual and voracious in his female conquests, Cyril’s sexual experience is confined to cruising and he’s constantly terrified he’ll be found out. He feels an “overwhelming, insatiable and uncontrollable lust, a yearning that was as intense as my need for food and water but that, unlike those basic human needs, was always countered by the fear of discovery.” It forces him to make dishonest choices and romantically engage with women when he really longs for a relationship with a man. One of the greatest obstacles his character must overcome is learning to be honest about who he is, especially to people who will appreciate and value him regardless of his natural desires. Other gay characters in the novel have diverse ways of either concealing or expressing their homosexuality: “Ireland, a country where a homosexual, like a student priest, could easily hide their preferences by disguising them beneath the murky robes of a committed Catholic.”

Even as some gay characters begin to live quite openly in later years, Cyril struggles to freely express himself or confide in people he should trust. It’s touching how the long-lasting deleterious effects of being made to feel like an outcast or deviant in society manifest in the ways the characters relate to each other or shut each other out. It produces an overwhelming sense of isolation, something that Cyril recognizes when he encounters another character late in the novel: “It's as if she understood completely the condition of loneliness and how it undermines us all, forcing us to make choices that we know are wrong for us.” This movingly describes the way people who’ve been ostracised by society can hurt themselves and others. Yet, there are moments when characters can form a unique unity and bond over their estrangement when it’s acknowledged that “We're none of us normal. Not in this fucking country.”

The title of the novel comes from an observation that theorist Hannah Arendt made about W.H. Auden “that life had manifested the heart's invisible furies on his face.” It’s an apt way of describing this novel which is an intense, poignant and vivid account of a man’s hidden conflicts. His personal development fascinatingly coincides with that of his country. What’s especially impressive is the artful way that Boyne conveys an awareness of other characters’ inner struggles only through their action and dialogue. It makes for a convincing portrayal of a diverse social landscape with lots of dramatic and gripping scenes. It’s a breathtaking and memorable experience following Cyril’s expansive journey.