"The Heart's Invisible Furies," by John Boyne

💘 A book that strikes at the heart for our Valentine's Day meeting! 💘

Published in 2017 and never out-of-print, this book has gone on to be lauded by thousands of book clubs, win and get short-listed for book awards, and translated into over 20 languages. A literary tour de force concerning one adopted man's coming-of-age and adulthood in a modern Ireland divided in numerous ways, it is rife with topics ripe for group discussion. Some of those topics have had the novel challenged and an actual national banning in Europe. 230,000 reviewers on Goodreads and Amazon have awarded this novel an astounding 4.5/5 stars... so how will we rate this acclaimed, attention-grabbing "modern classic"?!

**Note: I'm giving us an extra couple weeks between meetings to read this book, since it comes in at around 580 pages.**

From Goodreads:

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from – and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.

In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.