The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

"A big story perhaps too big a story"

In The Heart's Invisible Furies John Boyne writes an epic multi-generational tale about relationships, about fate and about the indirect paths our lives lead. With themes including religion, family, class and sexuality this is hard hitting and emotionally complex stuff that Boyne weaves together effortlessly.  

The novel begins and ends with Catherine Goggin who we initially meet as a pregnant 16 year old girl fleeing rural West Cork for Dublin having been told, by brutal and hypocritical priest Father James Monroe, that her chances of marriage are doomed forever. Though we follow Catherine through the rest of the book the story belongs to her son Cyril whom she gives up for adoption by a middle class couple in Dublin.

Over the next 50 years or so Boyne explores life through Cyril's eyes as a gay man in a country that evolves from ancient theocracy to the modern day referendum on gay marriage.

Dealing with sexuality and class is well trodden ground in literature which Boyne plays out in the comparison between parochial Dublin and metropolitan Amsterdam and New York but there are better versions of this paradox in books like The Buddha of Suburbia (1993). What Boyne brings to the table is a specific Irish context which is best articulated when Cyril unexpectedly moves back to Dublin from New York.

Despite the huge landscapes covered in the novel Boyne's prose is wonderfully tender and poignant in places; 'All I asked for was a sign, something to give me the courage to walk away, and you couldn't even do that!'.

Perhaps the trouble with the novel is that there is too much content. The chapters in Amsterdam could make a stand-alone novel of their own and seem over done if only to introduce the characters of Baastian and surrogate son Ignac. 

This is a big story, perhaps too big a story, that could easily have been two. 3

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne published by Doubleday 592 pages