Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

I read this book for the Literary Fiction category and it is by far the best book I've read this year, and maybe last year too. It's witty, heartbreaking, and I miss the characters. I highly recommend it! A strong 5 stars.

From Goodreads:

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 three score years and ten, 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.

I read this book for Week 09 - A Body Part

I was extremely impressed with it. Review is available!!

I read this for week 36, a book published in the last three years (2016, 2017, 2018) by an author you have not read before. I loved the story and the characters. I'd like to read more by John Boyne.

I'm reading this in 2019 for week 22: book from one of the polarizing or close call votes. And the category from that is "A book in which faith/religion plays an integral role in the plot or the life of a main character." How could I pick anything else for this book?

So far I'm really liking it, I'm about 1/2way done. I've heard reviews say the second half is not as good but that is ok