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John Boyne: They Don't Write Them Like This Anymore Cover Picture

John Boyne: They Don't Write Them Like This Anymore

April 30, 2018 by Tim Ehrenberg

A line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart's invisible furies on his face.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

They don’t write them like this anymore...

This is the tag line I have used when telling people about this book, one of my favorite books, by the way, of the last decade. It has all of the components of a Charles Dickens classic or a John Irving bestseller, and from the very beginning, it found a place in my heart. You know the place. It’s where all your favorite books go after you are done reading them. When someone talks about the book and your face lights up. When you recommend it to all of your friends and even strangers. When you think about the characters and you smile as if they were dear friends you haven’t seen in a while. When you beg the literary committee of your local Book Festival to bring the author to Nantucket...

Why did I love it so much? Let me count the ways. First off, it’s a rich story: rich in plot, rich in character, rich in themes. It’s a classic coming-of-age, in which we follow one character through his whole life. Cyril Avery (not a real Avery, mind you) is our leading man and what a coming-of-age story he has. These types of stories are the stories of our childhood. Perhaps you remember the first time you read Huckleberry Finn and dreamed of adventures on the Mississippi River, or perhaps you remember Little Women and whe you longed to be a March sister. The Heart’s Invisible Furies is different in one way from these classic books of days gone by.

Cyril Avery is queer, dears. Yes, he’s gay and we follow him through his whole life as he comes to terms with his sexuality, deals with horrific homophobia from 1940’s Ireland through the AIDS crisis of the 1980’s to present day, and reminds us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit. I didn’t have a classic gay coming-of-age story growing up and I could have used it. Now I have it and I want everyone to read it.

I hope you didn’t just shelve this into the gay section of the library in your mind, though. It’s really a book for all people. It’s all of our history and I think everyone can take something different away from it. For me, a gay married man in the year 2018, I closed the book with so much gratitude and respect for the gay men and women who came before me. Their struggles, their resilience, and their fight allowed me and my husband to live a little easier today and for that I am grateful.

So yes, it’s gay in all the right ways, but it’s also Irish and extremely entertaining!

It spans the globe from Ireland to Amsterdam to New York and back to Ireland.

Pardon the cliché here, but it makes you laugh and it makes you cry like all the best stories do. Full disclosure, I really did laugh out loud and ugly cry multiple times while reading.

So please do me a favor. Pick up this book here. Read it.

Laugh & cry.
Repeat.
Then join me as we welcome Mr. Boyne to the 7th Annual Nantucket Book Festival on Friday June 15th at 10AM in the Nantucket Atheneum’s Great Hall.

Spotlight on John Boyne: in his own words.

I was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1971, and studied English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin, and creative writing at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, where I was awarded the Curtis Brown prize. I now offer a scholarship to Irish students undertaking the MA programme at UEA.

I’ve published 10 novels for adults and five for younger readers, including The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas which was a New York Times no.1 Bestseller and was made into a Miramax feature film. It has sold more than 9 million copies worldwide.

I am a regular book reviewer for The Irish Times and have been a judge for the Hennessy Literary Awards. the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Green Carnation Prize, as well as chairing the jury for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

In 2012, I was awarded the Hennessy Literary ‘Hall of Fame’ Award for my body of work. I have also won 3 Irish Book Awards, for Children’s Book of the Year, People’s Choice Book of the Year and Short Story of the Year. I have won a number of international literary awards, including the Que Leer Award for Novel of the Year in Spain and the Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize in Germany. In 2015, I was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of East Anglia. My novels are published in over 50 languages.

My most recent novel, THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES, was published in early 2017.

My 11th adult novel, A LADDER TO THE SKY, will be published in August 2018.

(Where’s the midnight release party?) ;)