![]() ![]() The book becomes more serious, a bit didactic, and some conversations and situations seem less integral to the story and exist more as examples of social wrongs and individual cluelessness. After Cyril emigrates, about midway through the novel, the tone shifts. The book visits Cyril every seven years throughout his life, taking him through his school days and his unrequited love for his straight friend, Julian his furtive sexual encounters his hilarious and tragic wedding his life abroad. Cyril is born a few months later during a scene of great violence: His mother goes into labor as she tries to stop two gay friends from being beaten to death.īeing gay in 1945 Ireland was perhaps the one thing considered worse than being an unwed mother not only was homosexuality illegal, but gay men were routinely beaten and even murdered for their sexual orientation, with no repercussions. She is cast out of the church and the village and heads alone to Dublin, where the first half of the book is set. The story begins in 1945 as Cyril’s mother - an unmarried, pregnant teenager in the west of Ireland - is being publicly denounced by the local priest. ![]() That Boyne tackles such a serious issue with great storytelling and humor is to his immense credit much of the book is very, very funny. The book’s main theme is the Catholic church - its hypocrisy and its power over people’s lives in post-World War II Ireland. It takes on social issues and pivotal moments in Irish history as it follows the life of one Cyril Avery, a Pip-like orphan raised by indifferent adoptive parents and forced to make his own way in a very difficult world.Ĭyril, who narrates the book, is wry, observant and funny, and it is his voice that gets us through what are sometimes horrific events. The story revolves around the life of Cyril, who struggles with his sexuality, but it takes on board a range of prejudice and intolerance in the Ireland of the past seventy years. “The Heart’s Invisible Furies” is a big, sweeping novel, the epic story of one man’s life. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a social novel by Irish novelist John Boyne and published by Doubleday in 2017. ![]() John Boyne (“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”) dedicated his new book to John Irving, but it might be Charles Dickens to whom he owes the greater literary debt. ![]()
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