Set in rural Ireland at the end of the first World War a pregnant unmarried teenager is evicted from her village by the local priest. At only sixteen she decides her baby deserves a better start and entrusts his care to a nun whilst she goes to work at a tea room. Her tough decision goes on to plague her as she tries to make her way in life.
Her Son, Cyril is adopted by a wealthy couple and as time goes on he realises he is attracted to men but it is a sin within his staunch catholic upbringing and against the law in Ireland and for this he suffers greatly, but ultimately will he find the happiness he craves in the end but from different direction?.
The ending to this tale was bittersweet but so right.
Expect to find yourself on a roller coaster of emotions as Boyne unravels his masterful storytelling in this emotional story which can jump from heartache, confusion and misery to joy, love and the fight to survive.
A very enjoyable read that had me gripped throughout.
My thanks go to the author, publisher and Netgalley in providing an arc of this book in return for a honest review.

What a cracking read. John Boyce has written an absolute barnstormer of a tale set against the backdrop of an intolerant Ireland during the 20th and 21st centuries.
Heartwarming, sad and witty in turn, the book recounts the eventful life of Cyril Avery, conceived out of wedlock and taken by a hunchbacked nun to be brought up in material comfort in Dublin.
Charles, his adoptive father, holds a prominent position at The Bank of Ireland and is in trouble for a 'series of misadventures concerning (but not limited to) gambling, women, fraud, tax evasion and an assault on a journalist from the Dublin Evening Mail'. Maude, Charles's wife, 'rarely emerges from her study except to prowl around the house in a haze of cigarette smoke, looking for boxes of matches' so Cyril spends most of his early life alone in his suite of rooms at the top of his home.
When the quiet 7 year old Cyril meets Julian, the worldly, attractive, vivacious son of his father's solicitor, his world is turned upside done and his life is changed for ever.
The tale is chockablock full of rich, fascinating characters and is superbly written. The plot is delightful - intricate, weaving back on itself to pick up people and places and bringing them together. It also has a serious tale to tell of how many people suffered under the regime in Ireland during the 20th century.
A wonderful book which I cannot recommend enough. Probably my favourite read this year.
Many thanks to the publishers for a free copy of this wonderful book in return for an honest review.

What a wonderful book!This is a pretty long novel,but it is the most wonderful story of Cyril Avery growing up in Ireland and spanning his life.I really enjoyed how the book was divided into 7 year sections.Very funny and also touching.I was thoroughly invested in Cyril's character and those close to him.A very well deserved 5* read!

An absolute triumph !! I didn't want to put this book down and I was sad when it ended, it took me a couple of days to get over this book it mad me feel so emotional. This is one of my absolute favourite reads of the past couple of years and would make an amazing movie!! Prepare to laugh, cry, recoil and gasp when you join Cyril Avery and to a lesser extent his birth mother on his colourful journey.

1940's Ireland was ruled by priests, where unmarried mothers were banished by the church, ostracised by their communities and disowned by their families. Cyril Avery "not a real Avery"; a gay man born into conservative Ireland adopted by a curious and eccentric family, he felt lost and struggled to find his identity and his place within it. From a sleepy village in Ireland to Dublin, Amsterdam, New York and back again, he finds love, loss and acceptance and finally belonging. Try this book, you wont be disappointed.

This tells the story of Catherine who is forced to flee her small home town, amid getting pregnant out of marriage. Also Catherine is only sixteen. This takes place in Ireland where this was forbidden and frowned upon severely. We also meet Cyril Avery and his journey to finally being able to be who he really is. Where follow him as he gets adopted by a couple who treat him well but don't show any love or affection. We then follow as he becomes a grown man and the struggles he faces due to life and circumstance.

I found this book poignant, truly touching and heartrending. I got so invested with Cyril and Catherine. This truly is about finding your place in the world. I would highly recommend this book as it truly takes you on an emotional and at times funny journey.. There is a bleakness to the story but ye within that there is lightness and hope still found.

From the first sentence I was entranced. ‘The Heart’s Invisible Furies’ by John Boyne starts with such an opening sentence, full of conflict, hypocrisy, resentment and hope, it made me want to gobble up the pages and not put the book down. I wasn’t disappointed.
‘The Heart’s Invisible Furies’ is the life story of one man, Cyril Avery, but also of a country and its attitudes to sexuality. The story starts in Goleen, Ireland, in 1945; a country riven by loyalty to, and hatred of, the British, at the same time in thrall to its Catholic priests whose rules were hypocritical, illogical and cruel. Cyril narrates his story, starting with how his 16-year old mother was denounced in church by the family priest for being single and pregnant. She was thrown out of church and village by the priest and disowned by her family. On the train to Dublin she meets a teenager, Sean, also heading for the big city. Wanting to help someone so obviously alone, Sean offers to let Catherine stay at his digs until she finds lodging and a job. These first friends she make are some of the most important in her life, and re-appear at important times also in Cyril’s life. Catherine gives birth and, as she carefully arranged, her baby is taken by a nun and placed with a waiting adoptive family. We the readers therefore know the identity and story of Cyril’s birth mother from page one; he doesn’t. As he grows from quiet boy to quiet teenager, falling in love at the age of seven with Julian, Cyril begins to lead a life of lies and shame forced on him by Ireland’s attitude to homosexuality and his inability to be true to himself. Cyril negotiates the first 30 years of his life, trapped between lying in order to stay safe or being truthful and getting arrested. Then he finds himself at the marriage altar. What happens next changes his life in so many ways, ways in which don’t become fully apparent until the last third of the novel.
This could be a depressing novel. It isn’t. It is charming and funny, but can turn on a sixpence and make you gasp with anger, despair or sadness. The characterisation is masterful. I particularly enjoyed Cyril’s adoptive mother Maude Avery, a chain-smoking novelist who detests the growing popularity of her books; his adoptive father Charles Avery who starts off being an awful snob with a talent for unintentional insults; and Mrs Goggin, who runs the tearoom at the Irish parliament with a rod of iron.
I loved this book. Honest, sad, laugh-out-loud funny, touching, with paragraphs I just had to read out aloud to my husband. It is about being true to yourself, the need for honesty in relationships, and the power of love. My favourite book of the year so far.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

Not having read any of John Boynes books before, I didn’t know what to expect. What a delight! The book spans the decades of Cyril’s life from in the womb to almost the end. His story starts as a young homosexual man and how he experiences discrimination, love, hate, hypocrisy, death, sadness, crazy happiness, and every other emotion. It had it all and I loved the book. Not a dull moment. Definitely recommend it.

I'm not sure where to start with this review to do this wonderful book justice. I loved it, right from the start, even before Cyril Avery officially appears (although he is the narrator in the story). It was a delight to read. There is a wonderful kind of rhythm to the writing. John Boyne's characters are so vivid and real. I could see them. I could hear them speak. I felt as if I knew them.

It's 1945, West Cork, Ireland. The book opens with a young girl, 16 year old Catherine Goggin, being denounced by the priest in front of the congregation at Sunday mass and cast out by Father Monroe and her family. Her crime? Being pregnant, unmarried and refusing to name the father. She's told to go and never return and so leaves for Dublin where she manages to get a place to stay and a job and later gives birth to a baby boy.

Cyril is adopted by a rather eccentric couple who had no children of their own. They are not bad people but Cyril grows up, often being left to fend for himself and there isn't much affection shown to him. Charles Avery would always make it clear that Cyril was adopted and not a real Avery.

He realises he is not like other boys. He has no interest in girls and even at the age of 7 he becomes secretly obsessed by his friend Julian who had no idea of Cyril's infatuation.

I felt lots of different emotions – anger at the hypocrisy and small mindedness of the church and state, and sad at Cyril's plight – he had quite an unconventional upbringing and he seemed lonely and in need of a friend. He just wanted to live his life but of course at the time it was a criminal offence to be homosexual. It's horrific the way homosexuals were treated. But the story is also very funny and witty and a joy to read.

The book is divided into three parts and an epilogue: I Shame, II Exile and III Peace. It spans 70 years, moving from Dublin to Amsterdam where Cyril meets his future partner then later to New York where he has to face a terrible and unexpected tragedy. However during these 70 years Cyril and Catherine's paths cross several times without either of them realising. It also took 70 years for Cyril to realise he is finally happy.

This has to be one of my favourite reads of the past year. It's also a book I would be happy to read again and there aren't too many of those.

Having dipped into this and read some reviews, decided it’s not for me.

The Heart's Invisible Furies tells the story of Cyril Avery ( not a real Avery though) and his journey from a slightly neglected adopted child to an old man who finally feels accepted and loved for who he is.

The title of the book worried me - it sounds so melodramatic and we'll, a bit depressing, and a brief scan of the topic instantly made me think of A Little Life - a book which the mere memory of can reduce me to tears nearly 18 months after I finished it. But I was brave a leapt in.....and oh I cannot count the reasons why I'm so glad I did. Did it make me cry? Did my heart break at the turn of a page? Many, many times. But equally I laughed out loud as many times. The author captures perfectly the charm of the Irish but also their darker side. I can't count the times growing up that casual racism and homophobia slipped from my Irish relations, but always in such a blithe way that it hardly registered. I can honestly remember an aunt telling a gay friend "ah now but you haven't met the right girl so" and proceeding in trying to convince him of the error of his ways. And he loved her to bits. This book captures that so well I felt like I'd lived it. I didn't just love this book - I adored it. It's no stretch to say it will be a my favourite book this year, and for a few years since too. An thought provoking, heart wrench of a novel that somehow is so so funny too....Five stars with a distinction from 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.

There are very few books that I do not finish but unfortunately this is one of them No matter how hard I tried I just could not get into the story - therefore not one for me.

Oh what a gem. A wonderful heart wrenching hilarious saga. I actually shed a few tears which I hardly ever do reading and then laughter out loud within a chapter or two. The highs were so high and the lows so very low.
The characters were so finely drawn younend up feeling related to them. The years rolled along and I could have carried on reading another twenty chapters if there had been more.
Well done John Boyne you absolutely nailed it!

3.5 stars for me.

In many ways, this has a captivating narrative and excellent character development. It is the life story of Cyril Avery from (nearly) his conception to (nearly) his death. This is set against the backdrop of a very Catholic Ireland, while also carrying us through liberal Amsterdam, New York during the AIDS outbreak, and then back to a more modern Ireland going through changes towards a more accepting society.

What I loved most about this book is the way the author has built the characters, stroke by stroke, painting very believable people who nearly come out of the pages of this book - human, flawed, real.

The only minus was the fact the book is a bit too long and a few times the story ebbs and flows. At times, it was hard going, it didn’t keep me enthralled and I wasn’t looking forward to picking it up again. This happened particularly during Cyril’s 20s, but then it picked up with a vengeance during the Amsterdam and New York phases.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an impartial and honest review.

This was an important and wonderful book. With a cast of wonderful characters, this story spans the decades from the 1940s to the current time. Cyril is gay in Catholic Ireland. Bigotry prevails towards promiscuity, sex and pregnancy outside of marriage and being gay is illegal. The story follows Cyril through his life in 7 year intervals; he travels from Amsterdam and New York and back to Dublin. He acquires friends and loved ones along the way. There is a lot of comedy in the book through the interactions between people.

This is a book about a gay man’s life, but for me it was also about a man who was adopted. I am adopted myself, and my biological mother, Irish. She came to London to give birth to me and I was adopted into a very happy situation. But this story line, where Cyril and Catherine flitted in and out of each other’s lives, played with my heart a little...maybe I’ve interacted with my biological mother and never known it..this story line teased us almost all the way through the story. Would they realise who they were to each other? So, I found the tying up of this story line quite romantic and/or fanciful.
This book needs to be read!

First of all i should thank Netgalley for giving me a copy of this book. This is my second Boyne novel and again he has captured the time and the setting perfectly. The storyline starts with a pregnant teenager being evicted from her village by a priest on an altar in rural Ireland at the end of the first world war. It spans generations and covers the lives of people being ostracised and discriminated against. The characterisation is simply perfect and realistic and his storytelling brilliant. I can thoroughly recommend this book



It made me laugh and it made me cry, it took me on a journey of huge proportions I cannot wait to try more by this author

I have also posted this to Amazon awaiting publication

For a book to get five-stars, I want to laugh and cry. I want to whoop with joy when a character triumphs but equally, I want to have my heart broken (just a little). Basically, I want a million feelings and Cyril Avery, the star of John Boyne’s big, ramshackle novel, The Heart’s Invisible Furies, delivers it all.

There’s great emphasis from the outset that Cyril Avery is not a real Avery – he’s adopted by the peculiar but not inherently unkind, Charles and Maude Avery.

I was not a real Avery and would not be looked after financially in adulthood in the manner that a real Avery would have been. ‘Think of this more as a tenancy, Cyril,’ he told me – they had named me Cyril for a spaniel they’d once owned and loved – ‘an eighteen-year tenancy. But during that time there’s no reason why we shouldn’t all get along, is there?’

Charles is a banker, with a history of tax evasion. Maude is an author whose books received positive reviews but miniscule sales, “…something that pleased her enormously, for she considered popularity in the bookshops to be vulgar.’ Cyril, a quiet and accommodating child, seems accepting of his role in his odd family. He’s left to his own devices, receiving little attention or love from Charles and Maude. While the situation could be construed as cruel, Boyne instead makes the relationship between the three one of the novel’s comic highlights, bolstered by Cyril’s wry observations and reminisces –

I always called them Charles and Maude, never ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’. This was on Charles’s insistence as I wasn’t a real Avery. It didn’t bother me particularly but I know it made other people uncomfortable and once, in school, when I referred to them thus, a priest punched me around the ears and told me off for being modern.

When Cyril meets Julian Woodbead at age seven, his life changes. Julian is daring and charismatic, and from the outset, Cyril is in awe of his new friend. And so their story unfolds.

‘What’s sex?’ I asked.
‘You really don’t know?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said and he took great delight in describing in detail actions that to me seemed not just unpleasant and unsanitary but possibly criminal.

There’s an Irvingesque quality to this big, blustery novel – a saga; a story of a journey (both literal and existential); close examination of themes of identity and belonging; some mad and preposterous moments; and fanciful plot twists. Like Irving, Boyne fuels the story by exposing hypocrisy and hate – in this case, generated by the Catholic Church – alongside exceptionally memorable characters that we can’t help but care deeply for.

Cyril, looking back on Maude’s novels, observes that ‘…she understood completely the condition of loneliness and how it undermines us all, forcing us to make choices that we know are completely wrong for us.’ It’s a sentiment that underpins much of the action in this book and Boyne gently explores themes of loneliness, isolation and authenticity against the brutal backdrop of dogmatic religious beliefs.

Mention must be made of the superb sense of place and time (the book spans 1940-2000s), particularly the brief but revealing descriptions of Dublin. On her arrival from rural Ireland, Cyril’s biological mother notes that Dublin was –

…a place she had heard of all her life that was supposedly full of whores and atheists but that seemed much like home, only with more cars, bigger buildings and better clothes.

Decades later, Cyril observes –

The place of my birth and a city I loved at the heart of a country I loathed. A town filled with 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.

I’ve made this book sound grim but it’s not. Boyne tackles serious issues and some tragic and shocking events with carefully (and perfectly) pitched humour. There’s warmth and hope and so much goodness in this story and I loved every moment.

I received my copy of The Heart’s Invisible Furies from the publisher, Random House UK, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

5/5 A book that will squeeze your heart.

I have struggled with this book. It deals with important and controversial issues mainly as seen through the eyes of Cyril Avery. At first he had my sympathy but in the end I was just irritated him and the other characters. Some of the situations Cyril found himself involved in bordered on farcical. It seemed to go on for ever.

5★
“‘What’s sex?’ I asked.
‘You really don’t know?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said, and he took great delight in describing in detail actions that to me seemed not just unpleasant and unsanitary but possibly criminal.”

The description was boy-girl sex, but when Cyril finally discovered sex for himself, he found he was right about the last point.

“It was 1959, after all. I knew almost nothing of homosexuality, except for the fact that to act on such urges was a criminal act in Ireland that could result in a jail sentence, unless of course you were a priest, in which case it was a perk of the job.”

Cyril tells us his story from the vantage point of today, at the end of his life, but he takes us back and forth in such a way that he gives us information ahead of time but leaves us hanging to find out when he discovered certain facts himself.

The book opens with the irrepressible Catherine, 17 and pregnant, being flung out of the village church by the pastor. Her family wants her to disappear and never come back. (The fact that the priest himself has illegitimate children seems to be beside the point.)

She goes to Dublin, shares a flat with a couple of fellows, there’s a murder, her baby is born and adopted out secretly through a nun.

This is a family saga with a difference, and the book that kept coming to my mind was Hanya Yanagihara’s terrific story A Little Life, because I became totally absorbed in the story and the characters. Each was very much their own person, and the way they cross paths occasionally is very natural and ongoing and suspenseful as we wait for coincidences to be noticed.

These people form Cyril’s extended family, much the way Jude and his friends became a family.

We know Catherine is Cyril’s mother, and Cyril tells us early on about his mother (from the vantage point of “today”), but we have no idea when or how he found out. You will find yourself wanting to shake the author and say “OUT WITH IT” when the opportunity presents itself now and then.

But Cyril has no particular desire to find his real parents. He’s been adopted by a peculiar wealthy couple, Charles and Maude Avery who name him Cyril “but you’re not a real Avery” which is repeated to him at every possible moment. He is to call them by their first names, never Mother or Father, and he always, always, always refers to them as my adoptive parents.

Charles is a womaniser, Maude is an author who is happy to publish but wishes to remain anonyomous. To be famous would be unspeakably vulgar. She is a woman for whom the term ‘chain-smoker’ was invented.

“She continued to stare at him before turning her face towards the ceiling and blowing a great cloud of white smoke in the air, as if she was preparing to announce the election of a new Pope.”

They send him away to a school where he reacquaints himself with a boy who fascinated him when they first met at seven but whom he never saw again - Julian. Julian was sex-obsessed and worldly even then, while Cyril - well, you saw earlier how much he knew.

We follow Julian through the course of Cyril’s life, but between childhood and later adulthood, Cyril lives in the shadows, a slave to his ’criminal’ lust for sex with men. He cruises the cinemas, the harbour, the bars, and anywhere that a nod to another fellow at the right time is enough of a signal for them to meet for a quickie in the bushes or an alley.

There are bashings and deaths and a constant undercurrent of fear. Boyne describes this thoughtfully and realistically without lingering over any salacious details. It is real and frightening. Cyril suffers dreadful pain and loss several times. He lives in Amsterdam for some time, which is freer-thinking than Dublin, but nowhere is entirely safe.

There are good and loyal friends, a partner, women, jobs, and then the AIDS crisis when he is living in New York. He volunteers to work with the dying and crosses paths yet again with people from his past. He describes a patient.

“His cheeks were sunken, as were his eyes, and a dark oval of purple-red sent a hideous bruise along his chin and down his neckline. A line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt had once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart’s invisible furies on his face. He looked a hundred years old.”

Cyril is beginning to feel his own mortality. He hints all the way through about what has happened in the past but the story moves back and forth in time, so he leaves us guessing about the gaps until he actually returns to those scenes when we can catch up.

I loved this until about three-quarters of the way through when something about the style seemed to change. I don’t know exactly what it was, but I think there was ‘extra’ conversation outside the story and a fair bit of moralising about the evils of homophobia and politics and society and the Big Picture.

I’m a fan of show, don’t tell, and I really thought Boyne had painted such a clear picture of the circumstances of Cyril’s life that I resented the change of tone. But in Boyne’s defence, and to excuse his passion for making absolutely certain we understand, I will quote what he said in the epilogue.

“For although Cyril in The Heart’s Invisible Furies is born a quarter-century before me, he spends the formative part of his life as anxious about his sexuality as I was, and many of his experiences, I’m embarrassed to admit, echo my own during my youth.

. . . this was my life until my late twenties. I come from a generation that felt – that still feels – a little awkward about being gay, a little embarrassed about it, even though we know there’s no reason to.”

Great story to get lost in, and I’m probably in the minority about my small gripe at the end. My interest definitely waned for a bit, but I did get drawn back in later. It was quite some life, after all, and it doesn’t affect my rating. This is bound to be on many awards lists.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted.

What a wonderful read which all aspects of life Ireland from the1940 s to the present day and how it affects the main character Cyril Avery. It's difficult to talk about the story without giving away the twist and turns of the plot but just take my word for it that it's an exhilarating ride that has happy and sad moments - one of best books I have read recently.