Tag: bookish

I finally did it- I read the book that was everyone’s favorite last year.  And guess what?  I loved every word!  I honestly couldn’t get enough of The Heart’s Invisible Furies.  It was such a roller coaster of emotions; it made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me smile, and it broke my heart, all while becoming my favorite read of the year so far.  I’m always cautious reading crazy-hyped books, but I’m happy I finally caved because this one did not disappoint!

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From the back cover:

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery- or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him.  And he never will be.  But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?  Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamorous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.  At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from- and over his many years will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country, and much more.

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I adore interconnected stories, and the characters of The Heart’s Invisible Furies are so twined together that it actually boggled my mind.  The story begins as Cyril is an unborn baby still in his mother’s womb, and then it continues to follow Cyril throughout his life until he is seventy years old, with chapters peeping in every seven years.  Cyril is surrounded by the same cast of characters for the entirety of the book: his adoptive parents Charles and Maude Avery, his best friend Julian, Julian’s sister Alice, and many more.  In each chapter, Cyril crosses paths with his birth mother, and eventually they grow to have a friendship though neither of them know of their true relation to each other.  Each of their interactions felt like a little tease, and Boyne really got me rooting for them to figure it out!  The story built until their final reconciliation, in which everything finally came full circle.  I’ve never read a more satisfying ending!

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“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

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The Heart’s Invisible Furies has a unique narration style; seventy-year-old Cyril narrates the entirety of the story, so reading his younger self was interesting because it came from a wiser, older point of view instead of a naive, adolescent one.  Boyne writes with a unique sense of humor and witty dialogue that made me actually laugh out loud at times.  It’s the kind of dry(ish) humor that not everyone likes or understands, and I think a lot of what made me love this book is that I clicked with Boyne’s sense of humor.  It did take me a second to get used to his style, but once I got into it I absolutely flew through the book.  I read the second half in just a day or two.

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“If there is one thing I’ve learned in more than seven decades of life, it’s that the world is a completely fucked-up place.  You never know what’s around the corner and it’s often something unpleasant.”

-John Boyne, The Heart’s Invisible Furies

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If you haven’t yet read The Heart’s Invisible Furies, I would strongly recommend that you jump on the bandwagon.  It’s an emotional coming-of-age story with brilliantly intertwined characters that you’ll want to hug when you finish.  You won’t be disappointed!

You can find this book on Goodreads and Amazon.

After Meg Wolitzer’s 2013 novel The Interestings became one of my favorite books of last year (I was a little late to the game), I was eager to pick up her newest, The Female Persuasion, when it released last month.  Inspiring and compulsively-readable, The Female Persuasion is truly a book for its time, showcasing life as a woman in the modern world and exploring the many facets of feminism that exist today.

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“I sometimes think that the most effective people in the world are introverts who taught themselves to be extroverts.”

-Meg Wolitzer, The Female Persuasion

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From the jacket:

Greer Kadetsky is a college freshman when she meets the woman who will change her life.  Faith Frank, dazzingly persuassive and elegant at sixty-three, has been a pillar of the women’s movement for decades, a figure who inspires others.  Hearing Faith speak for the first time, in a crowded campus chapel, Greer feels her inner world light up.  She and Cory, her high school boyfriend, have both been hardworking and ambitious, jokingly referred to as “twin rocket ships,” headed up and up and up.  Yet for so long Greer has been full of longing, in search of a purpose she can’t quite name.  And then, astonishingly, Faith invites her to make something out of her new sense of awakening.  Over time, Faith leads Greer along the most exciting and rewarding path of her life, as it wings toward and away from her meant-to-be love story with Cory, and the future she’d always imagined.  As Cory’s path, too, is altered in ways that feel beyond his control, both of them are asked to reckon with what they really want.  What does it mean to be powerful?  How do people measure their impact upon the world, and upon one another?  Does all of this look different for men than it does for women?

With humor, wisdom, and profound intelligence, Meg Wolitzer weaves insights about power and influence, ego and loyalty, womanhood and ambition into a moving story that looks at the romantic ideals we pursue deep into adulthood: ideals relating not just to whom we want to be with, but who we want to be.  At its heart, The Female Persuasion is about the select figures and experiences that shape our lives.  It’s about the people who guide and the people who follow- and how those roles evolve over time.  And it acknowledges the flame we all want to believe is flickering inside of us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time.

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In the vein of The Interestings, the book follows a handful of characters: Greer Kadetsky, a shy college student who blossoms into a young feminist role model; Zee Eisenstat, longtime activist, lesbian, and Greer’s college best friend, who has long been betrayed by the women in her life; Cory Pinto, Greer’s high school sweetheart who takes over his mother’s roles as caretaker and housekeeper after the tragic dispensation of his family; and finally Faith Frank, the famous feminist who offers Greer a job straight out of college and mentors her into becoming the woman she is through their work at Faith’s women’s foundation.

Though the novel tells the story of these four characters, there is a heavy focus on Greer, and she is, in a sense, the main character, especially in the beginning of the novel.  She was by far my favorite character, simply because we share so many qualities.  Like me, Greer is quiet and introspective, but as she progresses through college she becomes bolder and less afraid to share her opinion.  I haven’t read many college-age narratives so I enjoyed reading about Greer’s life as a college freshman particularly because I just finished my freshman year!  Furthermore, Greer moves to New York after college, and that’s exactly what I want to do!  Recognizing myself in the main character definitely made this novel a page-turner for me.

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“If the twenty-first century taught you anything, it was that your words belonged to everyone, even if they actually didn’t.”

-Meg Wolitzer, The Female Persuasion

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The Female Persuasion is the perfect book to lose yourself in.  It’s an easy read, not necessarily a beach read but more like a book club read, in which there’s plenty to discuss and most readers will find something they like.  It’s dialogue-heavy with simple readable prose, but the insights Wolitzer provides are what makes it such a powerful read.  The Female Persuasion will definitely stay with me for a long time.

You can find this book on Goodreads and Amazon.