The Heart's Invisible Furies

It's funny how books appear in your life. I'd never have picked up this book to read myself. It doesn't sound as if it would be a book I'd like. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

It may be my favorite read of the year.

It's the story of Cyril Avery, from his birth in the 1940s until today. Cyril was born to an unmarried girl in Ireland and he was quickly adopted by two oddly uninterested-in-being-parents parents, and he continues to suffer all the deep torments and struggles—with relationships, with work, with religion, with laws, with his native land—that humans have always been tormented with and struggled with.

It's thoughtful, it's deadly serious, it's grossly exaggerated, it's deeply true, it's wildly funny—it's everything you want in a good book. You are missing out if you don't read it.