The Heart's Invisible Furies - The Library of the Uncommons

eBook, 592 pages

English language

Published Aug. 21, 2017 by Hogarth.

ISBN:: 978-1-5247-6080-9

(1 review)

From the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Boy In the Striped Pajamas, a sweeping, heartfelt saga about the course of one man's life, beginning and ending in post-war Ireland

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery -- or at least, that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from and over his many years will struggle to discover …

From the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Boy In the Striped Pajamas, a sweeping, heartfelt saga about the course of one man's life, beginning and ending in post-war Ireland

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery -- or at least, that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from and over his many years will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country, and much more.

In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.

5 editions

KnitAFett reviewed The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Absolute beauty.

5 stars

This was my first Boyne book so I cannot compare this work to previous ones, but if the others are anything like this on, the man is a genius.

This was a bit of a beastie and that caused me to put it off longer than I should have due to bad experiences with longer books dragging on for the sake of additional pages. This did not drag on at all. Everything that happens to Cyril throughout this book has a purpose and an impact on his life as well as the lives of the people around him.

Cyril is a queer male in Ireland during a time where it was illegal to be so and could mean death if found out. Due to this, there is a lot of hate crimes and violence throughout the book that also end in some deaths, so definitely beware of that before picking …

This was my first Boyne book so I cannot compare this work to previous ones, but if the others are anything like this on, the man is a genius.

This was a bit of a beastie and that caused me to put it off longer than I should have due to bad experiences with longer books dragging on for the sake of additional pages. This did not drag on at all. Everything that happens to Cyril throughout this book has a purpose and an impact on his life as well as the lives of the people around him.

Cyril is a queer male in Ireland during a time where it was illegal to be so and could mean death if found out. Due to this, there is a lot of hate crimes and violence throughout the book that also end in some deaths, so definitely beware of that before picking it up. There is also a good amount of misogyny and discussions on the hypocrisy of the church. Again, everything that happens in here had a purpose behind it, so it never came across as just hating against anyone.

Highly recommend this one. I laughed, I cried, I gasped, all the emotions that a good book will pull out of your soul.