The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne, Penguin.

Spanning 70 years from 1945 to 2015, this novel unfolds like a map of the human heart – that of Cyril Avery. Catherine Goggin, 16 and pregnant, was denounced from the pulpit by the Cork priest. On a one-way ticket to Dublin, she meets Sean, and Boyne’s humour begins. “Do you go all the way?” and “Do you go up and down a lot?” [to Dublin] he asks. Kitty has a fantasy

“… they would leave the bus as sweethearts and bring me [Cyril] up as their own”. But Sean is met by Jack – flatsharer Kitty later discovering “it was their love nest. And she the cuckoo in the nest.” Handing her newborn to the nuns, she says her husband died, and Mrs Goggin gains employment as a tea girl at Parliament House. This is where adult Cyril and his mother unwittingly meet on occasions. Cyril was adopted by novelist Maude and womaniser, gambler and tax evader, bank director Charles Avery. It is at their house where Cyril, seven, meets his obsessive love, Julian. Cyril is flushed with innocence, without bitterness for the denial of love in his life. We ache for him to know the tea lady, full of fairness and compassion, is his mother.