My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
----Dr. Seuss
Scott Stambach, an American author, pens his debut young adult novel, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko that is centered around a teenage born physically deformed boy living in a church-funded hospital in Belarus along side with other sick and handicapped children. The author weaves a sweet love story of this boy who is frustrated with the people and the limited world around him.
Synopsis:
A hilarious, heart wrenching, and powerful debut novel about a disabled boy who finds love and hope in a Russian hospital.
Seventeen-year-old Ivan Isaenko is a life-long resident of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus. Born severely deformed, yet mentally keen with a frighteningly sharp wit, strong intellect, and a voracious appetite for books, Ivan is forced to interact with the world through the vivid prism of his mind. For the most part, every day is exactly the same for Ivan. That is until the seventeen-year-old Polina arrives at the hospital. At first, Ivan resents Polina. She steals his books. She challenges his routine. The nurses like her. But eventually, he is drawn to her and the two forge a romance that is tenuous and beautiful and everything they never dared dream of. And now Ivan wants something, whereas before he survived by being utterly detached from things and people: Ivan wants Polina to live.
As long as he can remember, Ivan Isaenko has forever lived in the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus, who is born as physically handicapped with a rather sharp mind thereby making him wheel chair bound. His only friends in this hospitals are books and an aged nurse who takes care of him. Everyday is same as per him, until Polina, a beautiful girl with cancer arrives at the hospital. And there begins the most heart touching love story between these two souls, where one is fighting against a deadly life-threatening disease although when she knows that she has only few months to live by, and another who knows that his deformity will never let him live freely or happily. So now Ivan only has one wish that is Polina to beat cancer.
From the synopsis, the book sounds a bit like John Green's novel, The Fault in Our Stars, but trust me, this book is nowhere closer to TFIOS. This book has its own charm, wit and flair that will simply leave the readers feeling entertained as well as moved. The story is told from a seventeen year old physically handicapped boy with a clever mind's, who only likes to read, voice and oh my his constantly cynical and emotional narrative simply captivated my soul and instantly made me fall for this unusual character and his life story.
The author's writing style is brilliant and is laced with a myriad of emotions that range of being funny to being sad, and the readers are bound to sway along with its flow. The pacing is fast as the short entries of the protagonist makes it easier for the readers to move fast from one scene to another. The narrative, as I already said earlier, that it is something magical that will immediately arrest the minds of the readers with the depth of emotions within it, but is also laced with local Russian dialect with its properly explained translation done at the bottom of the page, hence this is the part which will enlighten the readers thoroughly. The story, right in the very beginning, opens bit sadly, but as the story progresses, the readers will be forced to laugh out loud with Ivan's sarcastic remarks and sometimes will be forced to cry out loud with the enduring pain in Ivan's life.
The love story between the two characters is developed with lots of compassion and innocence in the beginning, but with time, their relationship turns serious thereby physical intimacy grow between them, which are depicted with enough passion that will make the readers not only feel the heat but will also contemplate with their strong bond of trust and friendship.
The characters are not only well developed but are also portrayed with their flaws thereby making them look authentic in the eyes of the readers. The main character, Ivan, is the star of this book, he lights up the whole story like a fourth of July night with his casual, honest, charming, smart and unusual demeanor. I can bet that no reader has ever come across a protagonist who is so well-read and who understands and sees things with a rather unlikely perspective thereby adding an extra allure to those things or events. While reading, not once, I judged that this boy is physically handicapped as his voice is so flawless, polished and feels like someone well-educated human being is talking.
The readers will see Polina through Ivan's eyes and she is also portrayed as someone fearless, carefree and a bit tomboyish yet she has her owns flaws and illness to think about. The author also manages to project so many important themes through this story like Russian politics, literature, religious and atheist beliefs, medical science and its shortcomings, which will make the readers ponder about after the end of the book, but honestly, the afterglow will definitely come from this satisfying yet heart-breaking love story between Ivan and Polina.
In a nutshell, this engrossing story is a must read for all YA readers as well as for the literary fiction readers that is centered around a character which is hard to forget about even after the end of this enthralling story.
Verdict: In this season, this poignant book certainly can't be missed by the readers which is so much deep in emotions, love and knowledge.
Courtesy: Thanks to the author, Scott Stambach, for giving me an opportunity to read and review an ARC of his book.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Info:
Scott Stambach lives in San Diego where he teaches physics and astronomy at Grossmont and Mesa colleges. He also collaborates with Science for Monks, a group of educators and monastics working to establish science programs in Tibetan Monasteries throughout India. He has written about his experiences working with monks of Sera Jey monastery and has published short fiction in several literary journals including Ecclectica, Stirring, and Convergence.
Visit him here
Book Purchase Links:
Nice review! It sounds really interesting, especially the character development. I'm going to add this to my TBR. :)
ReplyDelete