Book Review: The Heart’s Invisible Furies

1945: Cyril Avery is born to an unmarried mother, Catherine, amidst much drama. He is not an Avery at that stage, of course. That will only come when he is adopted by a wealthy couple who remind him at every available opportunity that he is not a ‘real’ Avery, and whose manipulations of the law and dramatic tendencies add much humour to the early section of the novel.

Catherine, meanwhile, is working as a tea-lady in the Irish houses of parliament; her path will cross with Cyril’s many times over the forthcoming years. Cyril discovers at an early age that he is attracted to boys, most especially his best friend Julian, and in an utterly glorious sequence, confesses this in excruciating detail to a priest when he’s fourteen years old (the priest collapses in shock before he has time to advise what the appropriate penance for yearning after another boy’s ‘thing’ might be).

Each section is set seven years after the next, and we watch Cyril grow up – get involved with a woman, leave the country, fall in love, witness the death of AIDS victims, experience loss, and finally return home to a much-changed Ireland. But is it too late for him? The final section is set immediately after the marriage equality referendum of 2015; Cyril is seventy now and looks backwards, rather than forwards.

What does it mean to be a gay man in Ireland – and the world – and how has that changed over the years? It’s one of many questions the novel asks, but it does so by taking us on what might be described as a glorious, dramatic, funny and heart-breaking romp. I really, really enjoyed it.