Published by Hogarth Press
Publication date: August 22nd 2017

Cyril Avery’s birth was not a propitious one. He came into the world onto the floor of a tiny apartment, next to the unconscious body of his mother’s roommate, with the roommate’s lover lying dead on the stairs below. It was Ireland in 1945 and the roommate and the lover were also teens, but they were men and as such had been hunted down by one’s father. From this beginning of extreme violence, John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies follows Cyril on his life’s journey to find acceptance and happiness.
Being unwed and only sixteen his mother knows she cannot keep him and so gives Cyril up for adoption to the wealthy, but eccentric Maude and Charles Avery. Maude and Charles provide for Cyril, but are so involved in their own lives that why they wanted a child is unclear. She is a writer and a copious smoker and Charles is a prison-prone, wealthy banker and copious adulterer. Very early on, Maude says about Charles
What you know about women could be written in large font on the back of a postage stamp and there’d still be room for the Lord’s Prayer.
Cyril goes without love for his formative years and it isn’t until he gets to boarding school as a pre-teen that he realizes he’s attracted to other boys. He’s without the sense of self that would allow him to move towards love. Instead, in the ultra-repressive atmosphere of Ireland it is a source of deep shame and fear so he spends his twenties having furtive sexual encounters in alleys and bathrooms where even lust is tempered by the very real fear of being beaten or imprisoned. His is a supreme loneliness and it informs all his choices and mistakes he makes at the time. It isn’t until Cyril leaves Ireland after a misguided attempt to be ‘normal’ and goes to Amsterdam that his bone-deep loneliness and isolation is assuaged.
The Heart’s Invisible Furies reminded me of A Little Life but without the gasping physical pain. Which isn’t to say that Cyril doesn’t suffer—he comes of age in a time and place, Ireland in the 1950s, when homosexuality is not only a grievous sin but is also against the law. He’s told he can’t exist by both the government and his religion—which are basically one and the same. This is the third novel I’ve read, set in Ireland, that portrays the country in a terribly unpleasant light. The other two were The Wonder and The Good People. It’s not even light, but the pervasive darkness of religion used to promulgate hate and ignorance. Boyne’s characters don’t mince words at their treatment by the Catholic Church.
“Ireland is a backward hole of a country run by vicious, evil-minded, sadistic priests and a government so in thrall to the collar that it’s practically led around on a leash.”
“Sure the priests ran the country back then and they hated women. Oh my God, they hated women and anything that had to do with women and anything to do with women’s bodies or ideas or desires, and any chance they had to humiliate a woman or bring her down, they would take full advantage of it.”
Boyne moves the pieces of Cyril’s life with finesse and grace, letting the reader in on the big picture even as Cyril has no idea how everything in his life fits together. Bearing witness as it unfolds is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. He does not shy away from exploring the pain in Cyril’s life, but he tempers the emotional traumas by infusing the novel with a trenchant humor—even about such things as parents that don’t show love, a near arrest in a men’s bathroom, and dating a woman he doesn’t even like. Boyne’s use of humor, even in the worst times of Cyril’s life, is what sets the novel apart. He doesn’t make light of it, just reminds us how, often, being able to laugh is the only way to get through the pain. It is this gift that allows The Heart’s Invisible Furies to tug, pull, and ultimately nestle in the reader’s heart.
Yay – thrilled to see those 5 stars!! And I was thinking of the A Little Life comparison too…minus the extent of the violence of course.
GAH! I am so excited to read this one, Catherine! It is first up on my list after Nonfiction November; what a lovely review.
You will love it- I know you will!
This is a beautiful review! You really did this book justice. Makes me want to read it all over again.
Have you read anything else from John Boyne? I think you would like A History of Loneliness. But there’s more rage in the reading of that one…
Perfect- you know how much suppressed rage I have these days! I’ve heard that The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is wonderful, but I’m not sure I can handle it right now. I just finished a Holocaust novel.
Wow another super positive review of this one! I’ll be reading it sometime in the next few weeks and I’m definitely looking forward to it. Great review!
Thank you! It’s going to be in my top 3 for this year. It is stunning.
Love, love, loved this book! I also compared it to A little Life at the end of my review. Not as heartbreaking, but still the pain. I also love that you commented on the dark side of the Irish Catholic view and its oppression of its followers. That really did come out in all three books you mentioned. (I read those, too. Are we book twins?) Great review of a fantastic book!
Did you? This is why I can never read your reviews or Sarah’s before I write mine- we think so much alike.
I think we’ve moved past twinship and with Sarah we’re bookish triplets! Or a triumvirate!
Dang girl, you write beautiful reviews.
Thank you so much! It’s harder and easier when I love the book. Harder because I want so much to use the best words and easier because I have so much I want to say!
Bought this one at a publisher event without even looking at what it was about because Boyne and The Absolutist. I think I’m going to be as knocked out by this one as I was by my first Boyne!
I picked this as one of my Book of the Month selections, even though the page count gives me angina. Liberty Hardy said she wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up as her favorite book of the year. That was enough to get me to take a chance, now I’m doubly glad I did. I have no clue when I’ll get to it, but I’m looking forward to it.
Take a Xanax and read it. It’s that good and not dense reading. I’m with Liberty, except it will be #2 on my list. This is How It Always Is is hanging on tight to the #1 spot.
I haven’t thought out my top top, but Always will definitely be in my top 5. It may have the top spot, but damn, there’s some fine competition. I will get to the Boyne one of these days!
The man can write. I read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in one sitting. And then cried for 45 minutes.