Monday, August 22, 2016

The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach.  336 pages.

The tagline on this book is: "The Fault In Our Stars meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."   Our main character is Ivan, who, at 17 years-old, has lived his entire life in the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus.   Every day seems exactly the same, so Ivan, who is whip-smart, turns everything into a game, manipulating the people around him for his own amusement.  All that changes the day that Polina arrives.  She won't play his games, and she challenges his routines.  Ivan is irritated, and then gradually intrigued.  Soon, the two become friends, and then their relationship becomes more serious.  However, even though love can conquer a lot of things, it cannot conquer the inevitable.

This book is funny, but it's also very sad.  I don't think I'm revealing anything --- you can probably guess just from the summary (and the name of the hospital) that something sad will happen to someone.  This is a courageous love story, where the story unfolds through Ivan's journal entries.  It's an interesting way to tell the story, through the unfiltered lens of one character, and I found it was easy to imagine the setting, and the people around Ivan, as well.  I found Ivan to be a fascinating character, who blends together his knowledge of literature with his observations of the world around him to make for a mix of sometimes wry humor, a pinch of drama, and pathos.

This book is shelved in Adult Fiction, but I think it has appeal to both adult and young adult readers.

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