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Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?
Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from – and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.
In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.
Author: John Boyne.
Paperback, 592 pp, This edition published January 2018.
“The Heart’s Invisible Furies is a deeply engaging and accomplished work. Screamingly funny one minute and heartbreaking the next.”
Daily Express
“A special read”
BBC Radio 4 Front Row
“I ran through the whole range of human emotions while reading this brilliant novel. It's a masterpiece.”
Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love
“By turns savvy, witty and achingly sad, Boyne’s latest novel is an epic romp through recent Irish history. This is a novelist at the top of his game.”
The Mail on Sunday
“Boyne creates lightness out of doom, humour out of desperately sad situations, creating a compelling page-turner… a terrific read.”
The Press Association
“The Heart’s Invisible Furies, by John Boyne, is like an Irish World According to Garp, by which I mean tender, dark, hilarious, heartbreaking—I loved it”
Vogue
“An epic novel…. Worthy of the great master of the Irish comic novel, Flann O’Brien. The Heart’s Invisible Furies proves that John is not just one of Ireland’s best living novelists but also one of the best novelists of Ireland.”
Sunday Express
“Written with verve, humour and heart…at its core, The Heart’s Invisible Furies aspires to be not just the tale of Cyril Avery, a man buffeted by coincidence and circumstance, but the story of Ireland itself”
Irish Times
“Compulsively readable…hard to put down”
Irish Independent
“John Boyne is best known for his children’s novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. His new novel shows he can write movingly for adults as well… the cast is enormous yet at no point do we lose interest in Cyril.”
The Sunday Times