The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne: book review

The Heart’s Invisible Furies: Who is Cyril Avery? (2017) is set in Ireland and spans 70 years from the 1940s when Cyril Avery is an adopted child.

The first chapters are about his mother and her new partner Jack Smoot in Dublin. His mother was shamed and cast out by her rural community at 16 years of age.

Cyril grows up in Dublin with his eccentric adopted parents: his new mother Maud, an author, and his new father, Charles Avery, the Director of Investments in the Bank of Ireland. It was made clear to Cyril that he was adopted and not a ‘true Avery’ – therefore he would not be supported financially as an adult ‘in the manner that a real Avery would have been.’

He befriends Julian Woodbead, a boy the same age, and the son of Max Woodbead, the solicitor defending Cyril’s father. A precocious seven-year-old, at 14 Cyril and Julian are boarders at Belvedere College, and by 21 Cyril questions his identity and sexuality. By 1973, at 28 years of age, he dates Julian’s sister, Alice.

He abandons Alice and their son Liam. Constantly searching for his place in the world, Cyril seeks an expression of his true self, an understanding of his ancestry, and acceptance in society. In his middle-age, he volunteers at a New York hospital comforting people dying of HIV/AIDS – where many are abandonned by their friends and family. Here he finds a connection.

Presented with both humour and pathos, Boyne goes beneath the surface of outward appearances and personality to explore the truth behind Cyril’s need to be needed, and his search for the mother that abandonned him.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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