#anyways its just reminding me of people i knew and im just constantly appalled at how bad yall are at communicating

[libraryofmegharoni]

The Heart's Invisible Furies [John Boyne]

started: March 21, 2021 finished: March 24, 2021 rating: 5/5

review:

its now been 2 weeks since i finished The Heart's Invisible Furies and tbh i still dont have the words to describe it.

first of all i've apparently wanted to read this book for at least 3 years. after i got it i found it on a random list of books in my notes of books i wanted that i made couple years ago. i have absolutely no idea where i heard about it the first time. i actually dont remember where i heard of it or why i put it on my list a couple months ago but evidently i did.

this was one of the (many) books that i intentionally didn't read the synopsis of and didn't want to know anything about it before reading. i knew bits going into it. i had the general info that it was about a boy born in Ireland who was adopted, it's set during The Troubles, and its gay enough to have the 'LGBT' tag on goodreads.

after a day of reading it my only comment i wrote down was: i think i cried 6 times reading the first 100ish pages.

which honestly sums up my entire experience reading the entire book.

the novel is organized so that each section is every seven years. there's a total of 11 sections so it covers 77 years all about Cyril Avery's life. the first section is about his mother dealing with being an unwed 16 year old pregnant woman in mid-1940s Ireland. and let me say: the actions of most of the 'adults' are absolutely horrific. the first chapter is Cyril's mother, Catherine, being kicked out of her village at Sunday Mass. her entire family and the rest of the village are against her and back the priest who tells her she has like an hour to leave the village and never come back.

when she gets on a bus to Dublin, she meets Seán who is also escaping his village to Dublin. they arrive and are greeted by Seán's 'friend' Jack who reluctantly agrees to let Catherine stay with them until she can support herself. its pretty obvious that Seán and Jack are a little more than friends but Catherine doesnt think anything of it until the end of the section. before the end tho, we meet the only valid adult / person of a previous generation, Mrs. Hennessy. i absolutely loved that she makes an appearance the the following section and gets name dropped throughout the rest of the novel. this first section is where we learn her general backstory and god fucking damn it i was appalled. at this point its less than 50 pages into the book and i was nearly full on sobbing. and the tears dont let up from there either! right after finding out what Mrs. Hennessy has gone through, Catherine returns back to the apartment she shares with Seán and Jack and once again there's adult and parent who is absolutely horrendous. this is finally when Catherine learns that the two boys are actually in a relationship because, who we later learn is Seán's father, who Seán was escaping from when he left his village, forces himself into the apartment. within the next few minutes, there is a filicide , someone left on the brink of death, and a birth.

this is literally all 50 pages into a nearly 600 page book. it sets the tone for the rest of it and gives a solid understanding of the mindset of Ireland in this time.

7 years later, we finally meet Cyril as as not just the concept that is causing issues for Catherine. we're introduced to the couple that adopted Cyril, who are odd to say the least. they are the type of parents that didn't really want a child because they were ready but instead as a show piece. the Avery's also constantly remind Cyril (and others) that he is 'not a real Avery'. hmm i wonder if this will have an impact on Cyril's future relationships?????

his relationship with Julian Woodbead is one of the most important to Cyril's life. i think its talked about later in the novel how their friendship is built on a lie. from the start Cyril is obsessed with Julian and Julian doesnt acknowledge it really. the perception of their friendship is so biased since we are viewing the world from Cyril's point of view and how he is effected. because of this perceptive, its so hard to believe that Julian didn't know that Cyril was in love with him. but i think Julian was such a product of the environment his was raised in and living by the acceptable ideas of the time. from an early age one of his defining traits is essentially being a womanizer. its hard to tell how much of him is just for show and how different him, and Cyril, would be free of a society with such strict exceptions and definitions of right and wrong. was Julian truly completely straight? or was he lying to everyone and himself to fit in with society?

Cyril deals with his repression of being gay in such a detrimental way the entire time he lives in Ireland. he constantly lies to everyone in his life and forces himself to live a lie. his inability to confide in anyone leads him to getting engaged to, sleeping with, and ultimately marrying Julian's sister, Alice.

oh my god the lead up to the marriage ceremony and the events after hurt so many people and i didn't know who's side i was on for them. Cyril ends up in a relationship with Alice and somehow engaged to her. he almost breaks it off with her but every time he cant say the words. its heartbreaking thinking about Cyril was just so fearful to tell the truth to people who loved him.

its finally on the wedding day that Cyril confesses to Julian that he doesnt love Alice in any romantic way because he's gay and is actually in love with Julian. Cyril wants to Julian to allow him to not go forward with the marriage but with Alice's past (she had a previous fiance that left her at the alter) Julian tells Cyril that he's going to marry his sister and be a perfect husband to her.

Cyril does it. partially. he marries Alice then flees the entire country. coming from Cyril's point of view, i was relived that he was free from lying to everyone. but on the other side -- he just left everyone hurt and unhappy in the wake of his actions. its so easy to see how Cyril feels forced into his decisions but understanding how those decisions affect the people around him make it hard to support Cyril.

7 years later we meet the most important man in Cyril's life, Bastiaan. after leaving Ireland, Cyril ends up in Amsterdam, where it is so much more acceptable to be gay holy shit. he meets and starts dating Bastiaan there. Bastiaan helps Cyril unlearn a lot of what he was forced to live by and accept who he is as a person.

he also meets Jack who opened an Irish pub in Amsterdam with the name of Seán's last name. when i realized it was Jack from before and Jack named his pub after Seán made me weep like a fucking baby.

i could list all the times i started crying but i would end up crying all over again and have to add more to the list.

anyway in Amsterdam Cyril and Bastiaan acquire a foster son, Ignac, who just like everyone else in this novel, has a tragic past. after some events (another murder, this time the dick head is the one killed instead of the one doing the killing) and the three of them end up in New York.

they are in America during the beginning of the AIDS crisis and holy shit. yeah more balling. thats the main takeaway.

in New York, Cyril volunteers to talk to AIDS patients who are dying but have no family visiting them. one of the patients is Julian. once again i turn into a fucking baby. Julian reveals to Cyril that he has a son back in Ireland from the one time he slept with Alice. im gonna cry if i think about Julian and Cyril talking anymore i stg. but uhh Julian makes Cyril promise that he'd be the one to call Alice when he died and once Julian does pass, Cyril has every intention on doing just that. but before he can, him and Bastiaan are jumped by a group of thugs who end up seriously injuring Cyril and killing Bastiaan.

7 years later, Cyril is back in Ireland with Ignac. this time he is in Ireland as an openly gay man and is attempting to build a relationship with his son.

there's so much more that happens that i can't even convey. but holy fuck was it so god damn fucking good.

finally when Cyril is in his 60s he figures out that he is the son of Mrs. Goggins, who has never really left the story. Cyril and Julian run in to her when they are 14 in boarding school, Cyril runs into her multiple times when he works almost with her, the morning of his wedding at a cafe, and when he returns he works in the same building that she does. so throughout his life his birth mother was right there but neither of them knew it.

after 7 years, they go together back to the village that Catherine was born, raised, and kicked out of. its finally here where we learn the identity of Cyril's birth father (Catherine's aunt's husband).

bro i gotta be done now. like there's much more that i want to talk about regarding The Heart's Invisible Furies but i just cant think of them rn.

tl;dr - ballin like a baby the whole way through. also society sucks.pls read its worth it