This is The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne. I’m an enormous fan of his books – they’re all interesting, different and compelling. But I reckon this is the one he was born to write. It’s the story of Cyril Avery, who was born out of wedlock in a miserable, intolerant Ireland, and it’s about his life with adoptive parents who never really considered him as one of their own, and his birth mother whose life was as you might imagine was the case for many young women in similar circumstance growing up in Ireland over the last several decades. But it’s also about much more than that. I reckon John Boyne is a really angry man, railing against the injustice, misogyny, homophobia and misery of his country’s history, and in the process delivering simply wonderful stories that give the rest of us pause for thought, and so much reading pleasure. This is wonderful. Rush out and get it.
