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A review by jill_reads
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
5.0
First, I would offer the warning that the book contains quite explicit and disturbing descriptions of homophobia and episodes of misogyny which could really be upsetting, if you weren't anticipating them. Not unrealistic or unhistoric in their occurrence, surely, but nevertheless worth being aware of.
As for the story and the writing, it seems a cliche to say that "I laughed, I cried, I read it all with hardly putting it down" and yet... here we are. I did in fact do all those things. What I most enjoyed was the side characters which would pop up throughout the book and for whom Boyne wrote quite captivating and witty dialogue. The story itself is a slow trickle of redemption, of coming into one's own, and of one person's experience of a changing world which was at once both heartbreaking and warming. I would venture to say that I found the ending quite cheesy and a few cultural references throughout fell into the same category, but all in all an extremely enjoyable novel that it's easy to lose yourself in.
As for the story and the writing, it seems a cliche to say that "I laughed, I cried, I read it all with hardly putting it down" and yet... here we are. I did in fact do all those things. What I most enjoyed was the side characters which would pop up throughout the book and for whom Boyne wrote quite captivating and witty dialogue. The story itself is a slow trickle of redemption, of coming into one's own, and of one person's experience of a changing world which was at once both heartbreaking and warming. I would venture to say that I found the ending quite cheesy and a few cultural references throughout fell into the same category, but all in all an extremely enjoyable novel that it's easy to lose yourself in.