Architecture. Photo Provided by Maine Irish Heritage Center

Maine Irish Reads

Join us at the Maine Irish Heritage Center for our classic Maine Irish Reads! This week we will be focusing on the story of a sweeping, heartfelt saga about the course of one man’s life, beginning and ending in post-war Ireland.

Events > Maine Irish Reads
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Maine Irish Heritage Center
34 Gray Street
Portland, ME 04102 United States
(207) 780-0118
About the Event
Presented by
Maine Irish Heritage Center
(207) 780-0118
March 21, 2024

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.

COMING UP
Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
Wounds: A Memoir of War and Love by Fergal Keane
The Gathering: A Novel by Anne Enright