The Heart's Invisible Furies: John Boyne

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Belvedere College is a catholic college for boys: .... The society of Jesus- Its run by Jesuit priests. -- Homosexuality was considered a sin - Boys who are caught holding hands with another boy....would result in being expelled from the school. Gays were called 'nanny-boys', 'perverts' 'fags', deviants, etc. I was 16 in 1987. I can remember one particular day coming home from school and a news report said Aids was like the plague and was going to kill everybody. I enjoyed writing those, but was also nervous that people would think there were too many. I decided the best way was to have so many coincidences, that clearly, I had intended them. It felt right to me.” This story is the coming-of-age account of one boy-to-man, struggling with who he is and where or even if he belongs anywhere in this world, the shame he carries with him, the fear 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.

This book. THIS BOOK. I cannot remember the last time I became so thoroughly immersed in a story, fell so deeply in love with the characters, and had my heart so fully ripped out. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a masterpiece. Most people will know Boyne from his hard-hitting children's book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but this book is something else entirely.of you with daughters or sisters, upsettingly). Catherine Goggin is sixteen. She’s pregnant (but not The joy of this particular encounter is that it isn’t even a major part of the plot – it’s simply a delightfully entertaining side-note.

This introduction is narrated by Catherine’s unborn child, who grows up to be the novel’s central protagonist, Cyril Avery. He is adopted out at birth, and the novel chronicles the story of his life: his struggles, his loneliness, and his search for love and connection in all its forms. While the majority of the story follows Cyril, the novel's initial introduction to Catherine is critical, because it establishes the context in which the story takes place. In 1945, Ireland is a young republic and effectively a theocracy and, indeed, much of the novel is predicated on this intertwining of Church and State: the way in which religion and staunch conservatism bleed into the social and cultural practices of the day. In this sense, the novel is about Catherine and Cyril seeking to liberate themselves—in different ways—from the oppression of the Church and the trauma it has caused them in some shape or form. Unforgettable, Heartbreaking and Humorous. In “The Heart’s Invisible Furies,” John Boyne takes us on the journey of Cyril Avery’s life. His loves and losses, his heartbreaks and his triumphs. He makes you laugh out loud hysterically and cry just as often. John Boyne makes you fall in love with every single character in this brilliant novel. Cyril, his best friend Julian Woodbead, Julian’s sister Alice, Bastiaan and Ignaac. After finishing it, my heart was full. “The Heart’s Invisible Furies” definitely tops one of my favorite books ever list. I hope it finds its way on yours as well. How do you anchor yourself in that situation? Who or what do you latch on to? For Cyril, it is Julian Woodbead, a childhood friend who seems to have everything Cyril doesn't - confidence, glamour, the freedom to be himself. Cyril loves him with a passion and intensity that isn't reciprocated. This friendship snakes its way through Cyril's life, at times leaving him sad, angry, frustrated and jealous. The Catholic Church has not been known for embracing homosexuality, or sexuality except as it relates to bearing children to those happily wed with the blessing of the Church. It is in 1945, this era in Ireland, where sixteen year-old Catherine is exiled from her church by their priest, the same priest, who it will later be discovered had fathered two children by two women. One in Drimoloeague, one in Clonakilty. The same Father James Monroe denounces Catherine as a whore and bans her from returning to this town with the congregation looking on as he drags her past the graveyard, giving her an hour to be gone. Forever.I loved how the story connected so many people in the book over the years. Cyril even meets his real mom at one point and neither of them even know it. I wanted to scream at someone, but that's the way it goes. I shared this reading experience with Brenda and Lindsay. Reading this together was incredible. Lindsay and I loved Cyril like no other character. I’m so glad I read this with my sisters! Thank you ladies. Love you both. A radical statement, about a novel? Perhaps, but Boyne’s story and characters have remained with me and popped into my head many times over the past month, and the affection I feel for his protagonist, Cyril, is akin to something I would feel for a kind man I really knew. I was invested in Cyril’s story from the minute I met him, and Boyne succeeded in gently bringing me through the moments of joy and grief in his life as we would go through them with a dear friend.

It was like a film, she would later tell me, with everyone holding their breath as they wondered to whom she might point the finger of blame Told in seven-year increments, in 1952 we are introduced to young Cyril Avery, the adopted son of Roger and Maud Avery. Cyril is but a lad of seven years, and is taught to stress to others that he is the adopted son of Roger and Maud. This is the year that young Cyril will meet Julian, who will become his friend, his roommate, and the first boy that Cyril loves. Both Julian’s parents and Cyril’s adoptive parents are fairly well off. Cyril’s adopted mother is an author of some fame, not that she seeks fame, she can’t abide the thought of it. Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.Cyril's birth, in a dingy flat on Dublin's Chatham Street, is married by extreme violence and prejudice. It wasn't aimed at his mother, but at her flatmate, a young man she met on the bus to Dublin. It is heartbreaking. Of course there’s a fine line between authenticity and exaggeration but Boyne made sure never to cross it. He balanced along it for the duration of the entire book and no matter how absurd some situations seemed to be, no matter how extreme some people’s opinion were, they were never far-fetched. There DO exist Mary-Margarets, Julians and Charles all over this world and it’s realistic to assume that they might eventually cross your way. ;-)