Review: The Heart's Invisible Furies

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was offered a copy of this from an intern working for the publisher in exchange for an honest review, which I accepted, after feeling slight regret after passing the book up from Book of the Month.

I am a super skeptic of the hype machine. Seriously, the more a book is covered by BookTube and Bookstagram and book podcasts, the less likely I feel compelled to read it. And this book suffered this fate. Not to mention that I had previously read the author, when my book club read The Absolutist, a decent but short book. So let this pass me by, felt a bit skeptical of people who wrote glowing reviews, but then decided on a whim to read along with others in Litsy.

Okay, so I was wrong about this book. It is so easy to sink into it and get wrapped up into the life of Cyril Avery from pre-birth to death. It starts with his mother, an unwed teenager, being denounced from the pulpit and being forced out of her family and town, and moves quickly into Cyril's childhood as "not a real" Avery. At times there are major jumps in time between sections, often after a memorable scene.

The book will take you through a journey. I laughed (out loud, freaking out my pets and husband), I cried, I stayed up until the next morning reading the last 300 pages in one setting. Worth the hype, worth the read.

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