The Heart's Invisible Furies by John BoyneOnly got through about half of the book--Julian and Cyril have finally had their confrontation and Cyril as usual has run away from the new situation. At least this time, no one died. If the author had spent more time developing Cyril's character and had him evolve as much as the world around him, the book may have been tolerable. Before I gave up on it, I was already bored and impatient with him. I'd much rather have had a book in which we saw what was going on with his biological mother through all the years--found out who his father was--discovered if he had any capacity to relate to anyone with normal emotional rather than sexual obsessive feelings. Julian was manically being the playboy on Daddy's dime while Cyril just wallowed in an adolescent focus on his homosexuality and need to release his sexual needs. Then there is the half-hearted effort, when not following Cyril into whatever alley, park or toilet his was going to use for his next release, to make sure we all know just how awful the Catholic Church was in condemning homosexuality and the lemmng-like following of all of its parishioners. As though this was not a universal attitude in most of the world and as if that condemnation didn't and doesn't still exist without the assistance of the pedophile priests, whose sadism results from sexual frustration. Please. I'm sure there is an audience for the book, but its heavy handedness in its treatment of the subject is not new, nor is it particularly well-expressed.
I received this review copy from Blogging for Books
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