Every once in a while, a book comes along that is so beautifully written I procrastinate on writing the review to the point of guilt just to eschew not doing the book justice. The Heart’s Invisible Furies is such a book.
It sat on my stacks for weeks because I didn’t know if the story of an orphan Irish boy would sustain me for so many pages. But boy, oh Irish boy, was I wrong. This book is everything a literary novel should be: sweeping in scope, intelligent, nuanced, darkly comedic - filled with pathos and estrangement, humor and humanity.
The tale follows Cyril Avery from utero, and proceeds generationally throughout his life. Born in a conservative Ireland to an unwed young mother who is literally thrown out of her church, the piece threads expertly through Cyril’s entire life: his unlikely adoption into a home where he is treated more like a middle-aged boarder than a child, chance encounters with his birth mother and a series of life-defining - and threatening - struggles along the way, struggles - and threats - that seem embedded in the fight for Ireland herself to survive.
Moving, generous and finely-crafted, this book made me laugh out loud and audibly sigh. A multifaceted portrait of a desperately evolving man against the never-changing landscape of his intransigent origin country.
*Thank you to the publishers for providing B3 with an ARC.
Cast out from home, sixteen and pregnant, Catherine Goggin boards the bus to Dublin to start afresh. Once there, she has no choice but to believe that the nun to whom she entrusts her child will find him a better life.
