Tag: Reading Challenges

#BookReview The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

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About the Book

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery. At least, that’s what his parents make sure to remind him. Adopted as a baby, he feels more and more disconnected with the family that treats him more as a curious pet, rather than a beloved son.

So, as a young adult, Cyril decides to embark on a quest to find his place in the world. Sometimes misguided and often in the wrong place at the wrong time, life has dealt him a difficult hand but Cyril is resolute that he can change things, and find the courage to be himself.

And in doing so, his story will come across that of Catherine Goggin, a young, pregnant woman finding herself alone and isolated at only sixteen. There is a place in the world for both of them, and Cyril is determined to find it.

Format: ebook (575 pages) Publisher: Transworld
Publication date: 9th February 2017 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Heart’s Invisible Furies on Goodreads

My Review

I was blown away by All the Broken Places, John Boyne’s follow-up to the bestselling, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. It immediately made me want to read more of his books, as part of my Backlist Burrow reading challenge, so I was pleased when The Echo Chamber, his 2022 novel, was chosen by the Waterstones Reading book club back in January. If I didn’t love it as much as All the Broken Places, it demonstrated his versatility as an author and still left me keen to read this book which has been languishing on my Kindle for some years. I’m aware many other readers rate The Heart’s Invisible Furies as one of their all-time favourites and I now know exactly why.

The story, which gives us peeks into the life of Cyril Avery at seven year intervals, at times made me laugh out loud and at others left me in tears. It’s peopled with wonderful characters, such as Cyril’s chainsmoking adoptive mother, Maude, whose worst fear is that her novels will prove popular. ‘A new one appeared every few years to positive reviews but miniscule sales, something that pleased her enormously, for she considered popularity in the bookshops to be vulgar.’ I also loved the book’s clever structure which sees a number of ‘near misses’ between Cyril and another character.

At nearly 600 pages, the book is epic in scale, chronicling world events over seven decades, but at the same time intimate in its depiction of Cyril’s life. We witness his solitary childhood and his growing realisation that he is attracted to men but that this must remain hidden. It’s a story of friendship and unrequited love, missed opportunities and wrong turnings, and the cruelty of random events. Not everything Cyril does is laudable; some things are positively cruel. His instinct often is to run away from a problem. On the other hand, he is capable of acts of great generosity.

The book is also a story of prejudice – by the Catholic Church, the legal system and society in general. This is most powerfully demonstrated in the sections set in the 1970s at the height of the AIDS epidemic. It’s chilling now to look back at how sufferers were stigmatised.

More than anything though, The Heart’s Invisible Furies is a story of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. It’s one which, as the author notes, has a real resonance for him with many of the episodes echoing his own experiences as a young man growing up in Ireland when to be gay was illegal. I think it’s partly this that makes the novel so powerful. As he says, ‘The desire to fall in love and to share one’s life with someone is neither a homosexual nor a heterosexual conceit. It’s human’.

In three words: Sweeping, emotional, funny

Try something similar: The Romantic by William Boyd

About the Author

John Boyne is one of the most successful and critically acclaimed novelists of his generation. In a career spanning more than 30 years, he has published 15 novels for adults, 6 novels for younger readers, and a short story collection.

His most famous book, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, is a modern classic and, globally, the biggest selling novel by an Irish writer since records began. It was a New York Times No.1 Bestseller, and adapted for film, theatre, opera, and ballet, selling more than 11 million copies worldwide. It is used in schools on every continent to introduce young readers to their study of the Holocaust.

Among his many international bestsellers are The Heart’s Invisible Furies, A Ladder to the Sky, All the Broken Places, and My Brother’s Name is Jessica, a novel about a transgender teenager, which has won international awards for its compassionate treatment of an often contentious subject. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, The Irish Times, and in dozens of international newspapers and magazines.

He has won 4 Irish Book Awards, the Hennessy Literary ‘Hall of Fame’ Award, and many international literary prizes, including the Qué Leer Award for Novel of the Year in Spain and the Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize in Germany for his work on Holocaust Education. In 2015, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of East Anglia. His novels are published in 60 languages, making him the most globally translated Irish novelist of all time. In late 2022, John was shortlisted for the Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction for The Echo Chamber, and won Author of the Year for All the Broken Places at the Irish Book Awards.

In November 2023, John published the first of a four novella sequence, Water (Nov ’23), which will be followed by Earth (May ’24), Fire (Nov ’24), and Air (May ’25). Together, the sequence will be titled The Elements.

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#BookReview The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan @HodderBooks

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About the Book

Japanese-occupied Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, hides in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter, Jujube, who serves tea to drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day. 

Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth. 

A decade prior, Cecily, desperate to be more than a housewife in British-colonized Malaya, is lured into a life of espionage by the charismatic General Fujiwara. Seduced by a dream of an “Asia for Asians,” she helps usher in a war, and with it, a new, and more brutal occupier. Now, her family is on the brink of destruction – and she will do anything to save them. 

Format: eARC (322 pages)    Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date: 4th January 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Storm We Made on Goodreads

My Review

I first became aware of this book when I heard the author read an excerpt from it at the Women’s Prize Live event earlier this year. I knew immediately it had to go on my wishlist and I was thrilled when the publishers approved my request on NetGalley.

The story moves back and forth in time between 1934, when Cecily first encounters the charming but manipulative General Fujiwara – at that time going under the name Bingley Chan – and the four years from 1941 when the Japanese army supplanted the British as occupiers of Malaya (what is now called Malaysia). Told variously from the perspectives of Cecily, her son Abel and her daughters Jujube and Jasmin, it immerses the reader in the turmoil inflicted on one family by external events.

Having believed she was working for a noble cause, Cecily comes to realise she has helped to set in motion a train of events that will wreak havoc on her family and be disastrous for her country. Far from bringing about the liberation of Malaya, it sees a paternalistic colonial occupier replaced by a far more brutal regime. It’s a chilling lesson in the unforeseen consequences of lies and secrets. ‘Yet perhaps the only inevitable truth was that all lies eventually rise up to meet their makers.’ This is indeed the case for Cecily and something she is forced to confront, not only in relation to her own family, but for others to whom she has become close.

The author just about manages to retain, if not our sympathy, then our understanding of Cecily’s actions. Her obsession with Fujiwara – a man who can assume different personas seemingly at will -makes her blind to the fact she is being manipulated. He seems to fulfil some unmet need in her, providing her with a sense of purpose even though her actions involve subterfuge and a betrayal of her husband, Gordon. Indeed she even worries that when the Japanese are in control of Malaya, life will become ‘ordinary’ again, ‘filled with the small fanfares of family: children to be tamed, a husband to be tended to, the tragedies of dull domesticity rearing their ugliness once more’.

I thought Jujube was an interesting character. She’s old enough to understand more of what’s going on and the dangers her family face. Although Mr Takahashi, the teacher who frequents the teashop where she works, represents a more positive example of the Japanese race, Jujube eventually comes to resent his happiness. How can she celebrate his good fortune when she is faced with losing everything?

Meanwhile in Jasmin, the author gives us the innocent outlook of a child, confused at why she needs to remain hidden in the basement when everyone knows she’s afraid of the dark, wondering why she’s always hungry and why she cannot have a friend to play with. It leads her to take a daring action that could bring disaster.

The author pulls no punches in describing the savage treatment of the people of Malaya by the Japanese army following their occupation of the country in December 1941: forced labour, mass executions and sexual slavery. Many scenes are distressing to read, especially those involving Abel following his disappearance and the experiences of Yuki, the young girl whom Cecily’s daughter, Jasmin, befriends.

In her foreword, the author writes, ‘I hope that you will feel love, wonder, sorrow, and joy as you read. And mostly, I hope you will remember their stories’. The Storm We Made, although not an easy read at times, is an impressive debut. If you enjoy historical fiction that reveals a lesser known aspect of the events of WW2, it’s one to add to your wishlist or pre-order now.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton via NetGalley.

In three words: Moving, powerful, immersive

Try something similar: The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

About the Author

Photo credit: Mary Inhea Kang

Vanessa Chan is the Malaysian author of The Storm We Made. Her short stories have been published in Electric Lit, Kenyon Review, Ecotone and more.

She loves to read (of course), but also really loves TV, spicy food, and brightly colored clothes.

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