Oh, and is it ever tense! What will Cyril do? The pivotal scene, where he makes an agonizing, major life choice, had me sitting on the edge of my seat. In the 1940’s, Cyril Avery’s birth mother, Catherine Goggin, was cast out of the Catholic Church for being an unwed mother. Cyril was then adopted by Charles and Maude Avery. They have never considered him to be a “real” Avery. Then, at the age of seven, Cyril undergoes a defining moment. He meets Julian Woodbead and they do what all little boys do, expose themselves to each other. In that exact moment, Cyril knows. He likes boys. He also knows that in Ireland, in that day and age, it is not acceptable, thus Cyril keeps it a secret and so it begins. A life of keeping secrets. The story follows him to Amsterdam where he finds happiness, then to New York where the Aids crisis is spreading panic and homophobia.

GREAT DISCUSSION BOOK .....BECAUSE YOU'LL miss this novel so much when it ends - you'll be excited to talk about it with other people! I can't wait!!! Early-on, Cyril had my sympathy. He was an outsider, even within his own home. His adoptive parents were deplorable at worst and indifferent at best. They provided for Cyril financially, but constantly reminded him that he wasn't a "real" Avery. They only laid claim to him when it suited their personal interests, such as when his adoptive father faced jail time and wanted to appear more sympathetic to the jury. Ahhh dear Julian… this character made me so sad. I mean he was one of those guys you can’t help but like, he was sassy and knew how to work a crowd, but no matter his big mouth, when it came to the important things he seemed to fail miserably. I mean on the one hand he had countless love affairs and basically made it a hobby to have sex with every woman he found attractive but on the other hand he judged Cyril for being gay and sleeping with many different men. Even more so, he had no problem to accept that Jasper Timson, one of his old classmates, was gay and in love with him, but after all those years he was Cyril’s best friend he was disgusted when he finally told him that he’s gay. Talk about being hypocritical…. And then the way it all ended for him… T_T Despite all of that, I still didn't love it. I liked it most of the time. The rest of the time, I was bored to death. This audiobook was so long that I didn't feel like I'd ever finish it. Much of that time was spent with mundane descriptions of the main characters daily life and other uneventful filler. While it helped to give a "complete" picture of the social climate and setting, it also made the book drag, in my opinion. While my description makes this book sound more ambitious than it is, at its heart, this is a book about love of all kinds. Boyne's writing truly took my breath away at times, and even if I found Cyril's character a little too passive occasionally, I still felt for him, as well as the other characters Boyne created. There was a little too much violence in this book (not truly graphic in every case) but I know the scenes were in keeping with the world and time in which they were set.I’ll start on a positive: I think Boyne does a great job of conveying how oppressively unfair the social, political, and Catholic response to homosexuality and AIDS was in Ireland (and beyond, to some extent) until very recently. Politicians outed as homosexual would lose their careers. Men who confessed to doctors their shame and unhappiness over their sexual preferences were given cruel and ineffective “treatments.” Children were convinced by authority figures from a young age that the roads to Hell are many and being a homosexual is one of the most certain paths. Being gay in this place, in this time, led to arrest, loss of respect and even recognition from friends and family, direct verbal and physical violence from utter strangers, and more. Cyril’s introductions to sexuality are secretive after-hours public encounters that leave him feeling guilty and far from love. The Heart’s Invisible Furies gave me a good sense of the difficulties faced on every side, and the political/religious atmosphere of the country in these years that led to such intolerant reactions.

A perfect bite of laughter, intrigue and darkness The Heart’s Invisible Furies kept me reading like a mad person. The cast of rich, deep characters is enchanting as I felt each of them and their struggles. The writing is beautiful without being overdone, holding that perfect balance. I savored every scrumptious word from the first to the last, leaving me fulfilled. John Boyne is a superb storyteller and boy did he have a tale to tell! There are difficult themes surrounding homophobia and the treatment of gay people; ultimately this is a novel about the relationships experienced throughout one person’s lifetime. The main character is likable, but it is not perfect which is another aspect that I appreciated. He made some stupid mistakes and he did not realize the impact his actions had for other people and he did not gave the impression he cared enough. I also thought the other characters were well portrayed, interesting, although some of the traits were exaggerated for dramatic/comic purposes. I laughed - I cried - I discussed ( while laughing), this with my husband: things like: an ear - a toe - a thumb - a syringe - the scrotum - or even "remembering to comb your hair"..... and "remember where you are and what you've come here to do"..... The protagonist of your new novel is a gay man growing up in Ireland from the 1950s to the present. What made you want to explore homosexuality in Ireland? I had never considered myself to be a dishonest person, hating the idea that I was capable of such mendacity and deceit, but the more I examined the architecture of my life, the more I realized how fraudulent were its foundations. The belief that I would spend the rest of my time on earth lying to people weighted heavily on me and at such times I gave serious consideration to taking my own life.”The novel is dedicated to John Irving, a friend of Boyne’s, and there are similarities between the two authors, both in their chosen themes and writing style.

I want to see this story on the big screen (or on Netflix!). But I haven’t yet assigned actors to the roles, lol. I discovered that corpses of Aids victims could not be kept with the corpses of non-Aids, which makes no sense. Apparently the families insisted on it.”John Boyne's The Heart's Invisible Furies is epic, cinematic, poignant. It lingered long after I read the final words. It is a story of Ireland from the 1940's to the present day. It broke my heart in places, it pieced it together again in others. Though full of well-crafted characters, it is essentially the story of one man's search to find out who he is and where he belongs. A degenerate race. No one talks about sex, yet it's all they think about".....( says one New Yorker character in the story). The novel follows the life story of Cyril Avery, a gay, Irish, illegitimate adoptee. After his teenage unwed mother realises she can’t look after him, Cyril is adopted by The Averys, an affluent yet eccentric couple who never let Cyril forget he isn’t a “real Avery”. We follow Cyril’s life throughout the years, as he floats from country to country, anchored only by his friendship with the enigmatic Julian. I actually say I write books about adults or about young people. I think it’s an important distinction. But in the young people’s books I’ve never tried to use simpler language, simpler stories or simpler themes. I’ve written the book I would normally write, but with a young person at the centre of it.

John Boyne is an Irish author of 15 novels for adults and children. His most successful book, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, has sold 7m copies worldwide and was made into a film starring David Thewlis. His latest novel, The Heart’s Invisible Furies, is a bold, funny epic, spanning 70 years of one man’s life All of the characters in the book are well developed and interesting. Maude is just delightful if very weird, and I loved the teasing relationship between Cyril and Alice towards the end. I found I did not actually like Julian very much and wondered if I was really supposed to. Without him Cyril's life would have been very different. Who are we? Are we our names? Our families? Our birthplace? Are we identified by who we are born to, or who we live with, whether through choice or circumstance? What if we can't answer those questions, or if the answers we have aren't enough?Almost every human being yearns to love and be loved. Often this is given first by our family, and when it isn’t, the soul searches for affection in other places. This is the hardest road. That seems so ungrateful. The world will not stop turning if you don’t write a book. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. I thought, if I could make it funny, and still make the characters real, still make it moving and sad, well why not?” My only complaint, as I wrote above, is that some of the plot is unbelievable. There are some coincidental meetings between characters when I had to scream No way, in my mind. I understand that it made things more interesting but it moved the story more towards the fantasy realm.