📖 Our Next Read: The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
In July 1945, a pregnant 16-year-old named Catherine Goggin is denounced from the pulpit of her small Irish village and cast out by her priest, her family, and her neighbors in a single afternoon. She makes her way to Dublin alone. The baby she gives up for adoption is Cyril Avery, and this novel follows his life across the next seventy years of Irish history, through shame, exile, desire, grief, and finally something that looks a lot like home.
This is our next pick, and I genuinely cannot wait to hear what you all make of it.
🌿 Why this book, why now
This is one of the great queer novels of the last decade, and it maps almost exactly onto the kind of history we dig into every week. Boyne takes us from a Catholic Ireland where homosexuality was criminal and unspeakable, through the AIDS years in New York and Amsterdam, all the way to the 2015 marriage equality referendum that rewrote what Ireland could be. Cyril's personal story is the historical arc made flesh. Shame, survival, reinvention, reconciliation. History as inheritance, right down to the bone.
It is funny in places you will not expect, devastating in places you absolutely will, and deeply tender throughout. Bring tissues. Bring a highlighter too, because Boyne writes sentences that stop you mid-page.
📅 How we are reading it
Start date: Today, April 21, 2026
First discussion thread: May 16th, 2026
The book is long, around 580 pages, but it moves. Boyne structures it in seven-year jumps, so each section has its own emotional weather. We will discuss section by section so nobody gets spoiled and everyone can keep pace.
🛒 Where to grab it
If you have a local queer bookstore, start there. Your public library is also a great free option. It is widely available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook, and the audiobook narrated by Stephen Hogan is genuinely beautiful if you are an audio person.
💬 Before you start
Drop a comment below if you are in. Tell me if you have read Boyne before, if this is a reread, or if you are walking into him cold. I love knowing who is coming to what.
This is our history, refracted through fiction. I am so glad we get to read it together.