Loved by the woman who couldn't keep him and tolerated by the people who raised him, Cyril Avery's story is one of trying to hold on. It wasn't aimed at his mother, but at her flatmate, a young man she met on the bus to Dublin. Packed a bag and got out of the small rural parish of Goleen, west Cork.Ĭyril's birth, in a dingy flat on Dublin's Chatham Street, is married by extreme violence and prejudice. Ireland in the 1940's wasn't big on giving voice or choice to unmarried pregnant girls. So, who is he? This is the central, burning question in John Boyne's ambitious and deeply moving new novel.īefore he was born, Cyril Avery's mother Catherine Goggin - teenage, single - was denounced from the pulpit and called a whore by the parish priest. His adoptive parents continually remind him that he isn't a 'real Avery'. Who are we? Are we our names? Our families? Our birthplace? Are we identified by who we are born to, or who we live with, whether through choice or circumstance? What if we can't answer those questions, or if the answers we have aren't enough?Ĭyril Avery isn't defined by his name. Who is he? This is the central, burning question concerning the character Cyril Avery in John Boyne's ambitious The Heart's Invisible Furies, now out in paperback and in the charts.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |