The Heart’s Invisible Furies Review

Paperback, 701 Pages
Historical Fiction/ LGBT/ Adult
By: John Boyne
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

“A line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart’s invisible furies on his face.”

I have read three books by Boyne so far and they all got excellent ratings from me with this getting a full 5 stars and being one of my favorite contemporary novels. If there is one word that comes to mind when we are talking about Boyne books then it has to be memorable. I still read the first two books I read by him very well and I am pretty sure I will remember this one too which is not an easy thing when you read over a 100 books every year.

I am so glad I got a paperback of this book because it was huge. The book is 700 pages long which is not very common for stories of this kind and it had me initially concerned that the story may be too stretched out but in all honesty when I reached the last few pages I wanted it to be even longer.

“I remember a friend of mine once telling me that we hate what we fear in ourselves,”

The writing is excellent, the prose just flows smoothly and it is funny at the same time and that’s quite weird given how it tackles very important issues and yet it does so without being suffocating. At this moment, no other authors come to mind that succeed to do this as effortlessly as in this story.

Cyril is a very interesting character and I loved that we follow him through different periods of his life with 7 year time jumps. The way he develops is great but it also shows how a whole community develops too and all of the secondary characters were well written too.

Despite all of that, the story can be a bit dark sometimes and it even gave me A Little Life vibes albeit toned down a bit. The things the characters go through are not easy but as I said above, it is done in a way that is not overwhelming and I really appreciate that.

“Maybe there were no villains in my mother’s story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing.”

Summary: I heard a ton of great stuff about this book prior to reading it and I happily approve all the praise it gets. This was a perfect read for me from the first page till the last one. The writing, characters, story line and messages it includes are all superb. I am definitely reading more of Boyne works soon.

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