Lying in Wait
Liz Nugent, 2018
Simon & Schuster
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501167775
Summary
An "unputdownable psychological thriller with an ending that lingers long after turning the final page” (The Irish Times) about a Dublin family whose dark secrets and twisted relationships are suddenly revealed.
My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.
On the surface, Lydia Fitzsimons has the perfect life—wife of a respected, successful judge, mother to a beloved son, mistress of a beautiful house in Dublin.
That beautiful house, however, holds a secret. And when Lydia’s son, Laurence, discovers its secret, wheels are set in motion that lead to an increasingly claustrophobic and devastatingly dark climax.
For fans of Ruth Ware and Gillian Flynn, this novel is a “seductively sinister story. The twists come together in a superbly scary denouement, which delivers a final sting in the tail. Brilliantly macabre” (Sunday Mirror).
(From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1967
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—Holy Child Killiney Secondary School
• Awards—Irish Book Award
• Currently—lives in Dublin
Liz Nugent is an Irish novelist who has twice won the Irish Book Award. She was born and raised in Dublin, attending Holy Child Killiney Secondary School, and continues to reside in Dublin today, with her husband.
Her first novel, Unraveling Oliver was published in 2014, and her second, Lying In Wait, came out in 2017. Both won the Irish Book Award, and the latter was also selected for the Spring 2017 list of the UK's Richard & Judy Book Club, winning the overall Readers' Vote.
Skin Deep, Nugent's third novel was released in Ireland in 2018. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/22/2018.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) [A] devastating psychological thriller.… Lydia is the most intriguing puzzle; equal parts victim and villain, she simultaneously inspires pity, outrage, and horror. The result is an exquisitely uncomfortable, utterly captivating reading experience.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Readers who love sinister psychological thrillers will tear through these pages to discover how far Lydia will go to keep her son at home, and what accidents will befall those who cross her. —K.L. Romo, Duncanville, TX
Library Journal
(Starred review) Nugent introduces an unforgettable cast of characters in this tour de force.… [A]stonishing… everyone should grab it the second it appears.
Booklist
[T]his is a whydunit, not a whodunit, and the real meat lies in Nugent's exploration of motherhood, mental illness, and what could drive a person to murder…. A page-turner chock full of lies and betrayals and a very creepy mother-son relationship.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. From the start of the book, we know respected judge Andrew Fitzsimons and his wife, Lydia, have murdered Annie Doyle. How does this narration style, starting with such a shocking event, affect your understanding of the story? How did you react to the first chapter?
2. Would things have turned out differently for Annie if she had been the pretty sister? Why or why not?
3. Lydia often says that everything she does is for Laurence, for his protection and his benefit. What are Lydia’s true motivations?
4. Consider each of the parent-child relationships in the book. Which parents are good parents in your opinion? How would things have been different for Laurence if his parents acted more like Bridget’s parents, or like Karen and Annie’s parents, or Helen’s mother?
5. How is Laurence’s sense of self affected by the way he views his father and his father’s death? How does this affect him as an adult?
6. What does Lydia's mother's red lipstick mean to her? Why does she put it on after Laurence tells her about Karen?
7. Dessie is obsessively protective of Karen; he tries to explain this as he fears that Karen will end up like Annie. How does Annie’s reputation continue to haunt her family?
8. How is marriage depicted in the novel? Are any of the marriages happy? Which marriages are affected by divorce being illegal in 1980s Ireland?
9. How is Lydia shaped by her sister’s death and her mother’s downfall? Why are reputations and appearances so important to Lydia?
10. Compare and contrast the two sister dynamics in the book: how are Lydia and Diana similar to Annie and Karen? What does being a sister mean to Karen? What does it mean to Lydia?
11. Lydia assumes all children are closest to their mothers. How does the novel prove or disprove her assumption?
12. What role does class play in Laurence's relationships? How much of that influence is inherited versus learned?
13. Laurence is very self-aware, but it takes him a long time to see his mother clearly. Why do you think that is? Why is it difficult for adult children to see their parents' flaws?
14. How did you react to the scene after Laurence and Karen's dinner with Lydia, the final events of the novel, and Part Three? Were you surprised by the final revelations?
15. Does Lydia get what she wants? Does she get what she deserves? Does anyone else? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Bear
Andrew Krivik, 2020
Bellevue Literary Press
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781942658702
Summary
A gorgeous fable of Earth’s last two human inhabitants, and a girl’s journey home
In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb.
The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind.
But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen.
A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature’s dominion. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Andrew Krivak is the author of three novels: The Bear (2020); The Signal Flame (2017), a Chautauqua Prize finalist; and The Sojourn (2011), a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Chautauqua Prize and Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Krivvak is also the author of A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life (2008), a memoir about his eight years in the Jesuit Order, and editor of The Letters of William Carlos Williams to Edgar Irving Williams, 1902–1912, which received the Louis L. Martz Prize.
Krivak lives with his wife and three children in Somerville, Massachusetts, and Jaffrey, New Hampshire. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) [Written] With artistry and grace…. Krivak delivers a transcendent journey into a world where all living things—humans, animals, trees—coexist in magical balance, forever telling each other’s unique stories. This beautiful and elegant novel is a gem.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Most postapocalyptic novels bury us in blood or debris, but Krivak offers a completely different understanding of humans at the end of the line.… Poignant but not tragic, this … story shows that there's no loneliness in this world when we are one with nature. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
[Krivak’s] sentences are polished stones of wonder.… The elegiac tone reflects what is lost and what will be lost, an enchantment as if Wendell Berry had reimagined Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Booklist
(Starred review) A moving post-apocalyptic fable for grown-ups.… Krivak's slender story assures us that even without humans, the world will endure… It makes for a splendid thought exercise and a lovely fable-cum-novel. Ursula K. Le Guin would approve. An effective, memorable tale.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Great Believers
Rebecca Makkai, 2018
Penguin Publishing
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735223523
Summary
A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery.
Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself.
Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.
Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter.
The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 20, 1978
• Rasied—Lake Bluff, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Washington and Lee University; M.F.A., Middlebury College
• Awards—Pushcart Prize
• Currently—lives near Chicago, Illinois
Rebecca Makkai is an American novelist and short-story writer, who grew up in Lake Bluff, Illinois. She is the daughter of linguistics professors Valerie Becker Makkai and Adam Makkai. Her paternal grandmother, Ignacz Rozsa, was a well-known actress and novelist in Hungary.
Makkai graduated from Washington and Lee University with a BA in English, and subsequently earned a master's degree from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English. She lives with her husband and two daughters near Chicago, Illinois.
Her first novel, The Borrower, released in 2011, was a Booklist Top Ten Debut, an Indie Next pick, an O Magazine selection, and one of Chicago Magazine's choices for best fiction of 2011. It translated into seven languages.
Makkai's second novel, The Hundred-Year House, set in the Northern suburbs of Chicago, won the 2015 Novel of the Year award from the Chicago Writers Association.
Her novel about the AIDS epidemic in 1980s Chicago, titled The Great Believers, was published in 2018. It also received wide acclaim.
Makkai's short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 and as well as in "The Best American Nonrequired Reading" 2009 and 2016; she received a 2017 Pushcart Prize and a 2014 NEA fellowship.
Her fiction has also appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, The Threepenny Review, New England Review, and Shenandoah. Her nonfiction has appeared in Harpers and on Salon.com and the New Yorker website. Makkai's stories have also been featured on Public Radio International's Selected Shorts and This American Life.
She has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Northwestern University, Lake Forest College, Sierra Nevada College, and StoryStudio Chicago. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/22/2018.)
Book Reviews
The Great Believers soars.… Makkai has full command of her multi-generational perspective, and by its end, The Great Believers offers a grand fusion of the past and the present, the public and the personal. It’s remarkably alive despite all the loss it encompasses.
Chicago Tribune
Focused on a group of friends, lovers, and family outcasts, the book highlights the way tragic illness shifts the courses of people’s lives—and how its touch forever lingers on those left behind.
Harper's Bazaar
Tearjerker.… The Great Believers asks big questions about redemption, tragedy, and connection. Makkai has written her most ambitious novel yet.
Entertainment Weekly
Makkai knits themes of loss, betrayal, friendship and survival into a powerful story of people struggling to keep their humanity in dire circumstances.
People Magazine
(Starred review) [A] striking, emotional journey through the 1980s AIDS crisis.… Makkai creates a powerful, unforgettable meditation, not on death, but rather on the power and gift of life. This novel will undoubtedly touch the hearts and minds of readers.
Publishers Weekly
At turns heartbreaking and hopeful, the novel brings the first years of the AIDS epidemic into very immediate view.… [Makkai[]… shows the compassion of chosen families and the tension and distance that can exist in our birth ones.
Library Journal
(Starred review) As her intimately portrayed characters wrestle with painful pasts and fight to love one another…, Makkai carefully reconstructs 1980s Chicago, WWI-era and present day Paris…. A tribute to the enduring forces of love and art, over everything.
Booklist
(Starred review) [Makkai's]… rich portraits of an array of big personalities…make this tender, keening novel an impressive act of imaginative empathy. As compulsively readable as it is thoughtful and moving: an unbeatable fictional combination.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Yale’s group of friends is very close. In a sense, they are his "chosen family." How is this explored in the book? How does each character relate to their family, biological and chosen? Do you have a "chosen family," and if so, what brings you all together?
2. How has the culture changed regarding LGBTQ+ voices and stories since the 1980s?
3. Chicago is such a powerful presence in this novel that it is almost a character in itself. Have you ever been to or lived in a place that exerted a strong influence on you?
4. Nora, the elderly woman donating the 1920s pieces, seems completely removed from the rest of Yale’s life, yet her story contains elements that can be compared and contrasted with Yale’s. What similarities between his and her life are there? How has her past affected the present?
5. Fiona has suffered many losses in her life. How do you think that affected her as a mother? What are the ways in which trauma and loss are passed down through generations?
6. Do you empathize more with Fiona or Claire?
7. Do you see any parallels between the state of healthcare during the 1980s and now?
8. On page 353, Asher asks Yale, "Does it really ever go anywhere?… Love. Does it vanish?" Yale replies, "I mean, we never want it to. But it does, doesn’t it?" What would you say to them?
9. Is the creation of artwork always a collaborative effort? How do you feel about the relationship between artist and muse?
10. What has been your knowledge of—or experience with, if any—AIDS or those affected by the disease? Has reading this novel changed any ideas you have previously had about the subject?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
This is Happiness
Niall Williams, 2020
Bloomsbury USA
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781635574203
Summary
A profound and enchanting new novel from Booker Prize-longlisted author Niall Williams about the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing.
You don’t see rain stop, but you sense it.
You sense something has changed in the frequency you’ve been living. and you hear the quietness you thought was silence get quieter still, and you raise your head so your eyes can make sense of what your ears have already told you, which at first is only…
…something has changed.
The rain is stopping. Nobody in the small, forgotten village of Faha remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard was a condition of living. Now—just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of electricity—it is stopping.
Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparents’ house shortly after the rain has stopped when he encounters Christy for the first time. Though he can’t explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed.
This is the story of all that was to follow.
Christy's long-lost love and why he had come to Faha, Noel’s own experiences falling in and out of love, and the endlessly postponed arrival of electricity—a development that, once complete, would leave behind a world that had not changed for centuries.
Niall Williams’ latest novel is an intricately observed portrait of a community, its idiosyncrasies and its traditions, its paradoxes and its inanities, its failures and its triumphs.
Luminous and otherworldly, and yet anchored with deep-running roots into the earthy and the everyday, This Is Happiness is about stories as the very stuff of life: the ways they make the texture and matter of our world, and the ways they write and rewrite us. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1958
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—B.A., M.A., University College Dublin
• Currently—lives in Kiltumper, County Clare, Ireland
Niall Williams is a playwright, author. He was born in Dublin, where years later her studied English and French literature at University College Dublin and eventually graduated with a Master's degree in Modern American Literature.
After his univesity years, hHe moved to New York in 1980 where he married Christine Breen, whom he had met while she was a Master's student also at UCD Williams took his first job opening boxes of books in a bookshop in Mount Kisco. Later, he worked as a copywriter for Avon Books in New York City before deciding to try life as a writer.
In 1985 he and his wife left America, returning to Ireland to the cottage in west Clare that Chris's grandfather had left eighty years before to find his life in America.
Williams's first four books were co-written with his wife, Chris, telling of their life together in Kiltumper in west Clare. His first of three plays, The Murphy Initiative, was staged in 1991 at The Abbey Theatre in Dublin. His second, A Little Like Paradise, was produced on the Peacock stage of The Abbey Theatre in 1995, and his third, The Way You Look Tonight, was produced by Galway's Druid Theatre Company in 1999. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Williams has painted a lush, wandering portrait of Faha, a village back in time in County Clare, Ireland.…"Oh, just shut up and take me back to Faha," I wanted to interject at times. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t; he’s too sweet a fellow…. Be kind, he admonishes the reader directly at one point, and it’s a testament to this bighearted novel that I felt duly chastened, almost like a member of the clan.
Elizabeth Graver - New York Times Book Review
The Ireland that Niall Williams writes about in this novel is gone — or would be if he hadn’t cradled it so tenderly in the clover of his prose. Escaping into the pages of This Is Happiness feels as much like time travel as enlightenment.… Williams’s most affecting skill is his ability to narrate this novel in two registers simultaneously, capturing Noe’s naivete as a teen and his wisdom as an old man.… If you’re a reader of a certain frame of mind, craving a novel of delicate wit laced with rare insight, this, truly, is happiness.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
In the pre-modern idyll fashioned by Mr. Williams, beauty stands out a little more sharply, and feelings are experienced with more directness and intensity.… A meandering, often delightful, rural rhapsody, This Is Happiness recalls only what was sublime about the simple life in Faha.… There is no small amount of blarney in this. I laughed out loud at Noel’s astonishing claim that "there was little culture of complaint" during that era, as though glorious grumblers like Sean O’Casey and Patrick Kavanagh had never put pen to paper.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
Williams balances carefully between nostalgia and clear-eyed realism.… [V]ivid character sketches abound ... Jumbling chronology and interjecting retrospective opinions as everyone does when remembering the past, Noe warmly evokes a village immersed in the timeless rhythms of nature and the rituals of the Catholic Church, counterpointed by blunt depictions of the bone-deep fatalism of people who know that outsiders view them as backward.… Noe’s musings may occasionally dip into sentimentality, but it’s honest sentiment honestly acquired from his embrace of the full spectrum of human experience — a lesson he learned during the transformative months eloquently captured in Niall Williams’s tender, touching novel.
Wendy Smith - Boston Globe
This is a charming, often moving book, enriched by beautifully drawn characters and brilliantly depicted scenes from country life. The narrative unfurls at a languid pace: We drift from Easter services to games of Gaelic football, from pub sessions to house dances. And yet we happily surrender to the gentle rhythms of the drama and the lilting cadences of the prose. Again and again Williams ensures there is musicality in standard descriptions and poetry gilding commonplace truths.… Williams has written a memorable novel that vividly brings alive both a different era and two different male characters—"knights of first and last loves."
Malcolm Forbes - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Charming is one word for Williams’ prose. It is also life-affirming and written with a turn of phrase that makes the reader want to underline something on every page.… This is not a book to read for fast-moving developments. It is one to savour, slowly, like the way of life it enshrines. The supporting cast is huge, eccentric, frequently funny.
Isabel Berwick - Financial Times (UK)
[G]lorious and lyrical prose ... Noe’s reminiscences of that period are full of beauty and hard-won wisdom. This novel is a delight.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) The beauty and power of Irish author Niall Williams' writing lies in his ability to invest the quotidian with wonder. A truly peerless wordsmith, he even makes descriptions of gleaming white appliances and telephone wire sing…the book is hilarious among its many other virtues. Buy, rent, get your hands on this book somehow and savor every word of it. Its title says it all: Plunging into This is Happiness is happiness indeed.
BookPage
(Starred review) With a beckoning gentleness that belies the deeper philosophies at play, superb Irish author Williams offers a lilting, magical homage to time and redemption, and a stirring, sentimental journey into the mysteries of love and the possibilities of friendship.
Booklist
(Starred review) Warm and whimsical, sometimes sorrowful, but always expressed in curlicues of Irish lyricism, this charming book makes varied use of its electrical metaphor, not least to express the flickering pulse of humanity. A story both little and large and one that pulls out all the Irish stops.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Heart's Invisible Furies
John Boyne, 2017
Crown/Archetype
592 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781524760786
Summary
A sweeping, heartfelt saga about the course of one man's life, beginning and ending in post-war Ireland
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 glamourous 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.
In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 30, 1971
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—Trinity College
• Awards—Curtis Brown Award; Irish Book Awards: People's
Choice of the Year
• Currently—Dublin, Ireland
John Boyne is an Irish novelist, the author of 10 adult novels and five for younger readers. He is best known for his 2006 YA novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which sold 9 million copies and catapulted him to international fame. The book became a 2008 feature film. His novels are published in over 50 languages.
Background
Born in Dublin, Ireland, where he still lives, Boyne studied English literature at Trinity College and later creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. While at UEA, he won the Curtis Brown Prize and years later, in 2015, received a UEA Honary Doctorate of Letters.
In 1993 the Sunday Tribune published Boyne's first short story; the story was subsequently shortlisted for a Hennessy Award. In addition to his novels, Boyne regularly reviews for The Irish Times. He has also served as judge for a number of literary awards: Hennessy Literary Awards, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Green Carnation Prize, and Scotiabank Giller Prize, for which he served as the 2015 jury chair.
Awards
Boyne's own list of awards list is impressive: Hennessy Literary Hall of Fame Award for the body of his work; three Irish Book Awards (Children's Book of the Year, People's Choice Book of the Year, and Short Story of the Year); Que Leer Award Novel of the Year (Spain); and Gustave Heineman Peace Prize (Germany). (Adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website. Retrieved 8/14/2017.)
Book Reviews
A picaresque, lolloping odyssey for the individual characters and for the nation that confines them.… The book blazes with anger as it commemorates lives wrecked by social contempt and self‑loathing.… [A] substantial achievement.
Guardian (UK)
This is nothing less than the story of Ireland over the past 70 years, expressed in the life of one man… highly entertaining and often very funny…Big and clever.
Times Sunday Review (UK)
An epic full of verve, humour and heart… sure to be read by the bucketload.… [D]eeply cinematic [and] extremely funny.
Irish Times (UK)
By turns savvy, witty, and achingly sad.… This is a novelist at the top of his game.
Mail on Sunday (UK)
An epic novel.… The Heart’s Invisible Furies proves that John is not just one of Ireland’s best living novelists but also one of the best novelists of Ireland.
Express (UK)
Boyne creates lightness out of doom, humour out of desperately sad situations.… [A] terrific read.
Press Association (UK)
The book becomes both an examination of Cyril’s life and a catalogue of Western society’s evolution from post-war to present day, with all its failings, triumphs, complexities, and certainties. The story falters slightly near the end, but the life of Cyril Avery is one to be relished. (Aug.)
Publishers Weekly
Readers will fall in love with Boyne's characters, especially Mrs. Goggin and Cyril's adoptive mother, Maude Avery, in this heartbreaking and hilarious story. —John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Boyne, who has a wonderful gift for characterization, does a splendid job of weaving these various lives together in ways that are richly dramatic, sometimes surprising, and always compelling… Often quite funny, the story nevertheless has its sadness, sometimes approaching tragedy. Utterly captivating and not to be missed.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [Cyril's] later years in Ireland seem to bring the promise of reconciliation on several fronts, but there is still penance and pain until the book's last word. A dark novel marred by occasional melodrama but lightened by often hilarious dialogue.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Heart's Invisible Furies … then take off on your own:
1. It's 1945. Father James Monroe. Care to comment?
2. Point to some of the book's humor — what do you find funny? Is Cyril's voice, or some of his observations, from the womb funny, for instance?
3. Describe the Church's position in the young republic of Ireland and talk about how its power changes by 2015.
4. Cyril knows he is gay; how does he deal with this knowledge, especially in the middle years of the 20th century?
5. What do you make of Cyril's adoptive family, especially his father Charles who insists that Cyril is "not really an Avery" and that he should consider his growing up years with the family as a "tenancy." What does he mean by that, and how do those words affect Cyril?l
6. Why does Maude Avery disdain popularity as a writer? Why does she bother to write and sell books?
7. How would you delineate Cyril's interior monologues from his outward behavior. How do those two modes differ?
8. John Boyne's book is very much about self-transformation. "Even at that tender age I knew that there was something about me that was different and that it would be impossible ever to put right." Is change possible after a certain age, after the brain becomes less malleable?
9. Boyne peppers his writing with coincidence. Why might he do so: what is he suggesting by its frequent use?
10. Talk about post-war Ireland in the 1950s. In what way might you describe it as nightmarish?
11. Consider the book's title. What are the furies, and why invisible? Boyne reserves much of his ire not only for the clergy, but also politicians. What makes him angry?
12. Which section of The Heart's Invisible Furies engage you more than the others … and why?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)