It has been a while since I hugged a book after I finished it, but this one I didn’t want to let go of. This is the first John Boyne novel I have read and I am kicking myself for not reading any of his works sooner. The Heart’s Invisible Furies follows the life of Cyril Avery, who was born in Ireland in the 1940’s and whose life took him many places over the years before he finally returned to Ireland. As a reader you come into Cyril’s life before he is even born, when you meet his mother, and you stay with him until he is almost 90. His life was never “typical” (or easy) and he spent much time lost in a world, a country, and an era, that was not yet ready for him. Yes I am being vague when I explain the plot but that is because I don’t want to give away any details that could spoil the story. I feel like this is a book you should go into knowing little about and just experience everything at the same time Cyril does.

From the first page I was in love with this book, and not once during reading did my love of it falter one bit. The characters that Boyne created and the story he told was beautiful and tragic from the very beginning and kept me hooked the entire way through it. I feel like I should say early on that it is not an easy read. I cried several times, but I also smiled quite often. This is Irish literature, after all, which has a history of being a bit depressing, but then the Irish never had it very easy and always wrote of what they knew. Ireland has also had a long and rough history, and the Irish are proud and write of their country quite honestly. I remember studying Irish lit back in college when I was working on my literature degree. Being Irish, with a grandmother from Ireland, it seemed like an obvious choice for me and I instantly fell in love with Irish writing. From the older writers like Joyce, Becket, and Wilde, to modern ones like Boyne, Tóibín, and McCann, they all tell such gripping and emotional stories. It is a literature that I find quite easy to love. The Heart’s Invisible Furies runs the gamut of dealing with a lot of the politics and turmoil of Ireland including TD’s, The Dial Eiereann, bigotry, religion, discrimination, the IRA, and also the hostility that Ireland had to endure from other countries and people. But while it dealt with many negatives there was also a love of the Irish throughout the book, probably because a huge strength and emotion of the Irish people was shown quite often. I felt that throughout the book you often found negatives balanced with positives.

The Heart’s Invisible Furies is a book that, while you read it, you are living it. You feel like you are with the characters as they experience everything because they are all built so well. You either love or hate (sometimes both) each and every person you meet in the book, no matter how insignificant they are top the story. The setting is also vividly described so it is quite easy to picture everything in your head. I have never been to Ireland but while reading this book I had no problem imagining it all in my head. Oh! And just the writing style in general made me love this book. The banter between characters was nothing short of amazing and the humor Boyne was able to work into the story, even at the heaviest of times, was just wonderful. As much as I found myself tearing up while reading this book I also found myself smiling and laughing out loud quite often. I know it is still early in the year but this book is a contender for the best book I read this year, and I am sure it will be a front runner until the very end.

So I guess I don’t need to really sum up my final opinion on this book because it is quite obvious from my review. This is a book that I cannot recommend enough, and I will go ahead telling everyone I know to read it. It is a story you will become completely immersed in, with characters that you will never, ever forget. I can also say, without a doubt, that The Heart’s Invisible Furies will join the select group of books that I will go back and read more than once. It has become one of my loves.

“If there is one thing I have learned in more than seven decades of life, it’s that the world is a completely fucked-up place. You never know what’s around the corner and it’s often something unpleasant”
“That’s a quite cynical view of the world, Mrs. Goggin,” I suggested.
“I’m not sure it is,” she said.”