This book is a love story which is completely different from most. A story about two terminally ill young people who meet in the hospital for gravely ill children in Mazyr in Belarus. To this hospital the human remains of the Chernobyl disaster who are still alive are delivered. “Luckily”, at this hospital those children are invisible to the surrounding world which would prefer to forget them.
Ivan Isaenko is seventeen years old and has since his birth lived in this special hospital. He has no legs and only three fingers on his one hand which he has trained so he can move around. But this charming creature has despite his severe handicap a razor-sharp brain and he can with a wink of an eye see through other people and what they are up to. He tries to get some meaning in his miserable grey life by reading as many books as he can get hold of and also observe his fellow patients. His observations he writes down in his diary. The diary which we read in this book.
However, Ivan’s world is one day turned upside down when the beautiful sixteen-year-old Polina is hospitalized with terminal leukemia. Polina sees right through Ivan just as he does with other people. She is a real pain and on top of this she is a kleptomaniac. She steals everything she finds interesting including Ivan’s diary. This way she becomes familiar with his inner feelings and thoughts which he finds highly disconcerting.
But for the first time in his short life Ivan grows fond of another person even though she bullies him and irritates him. Despite Polina’s behavior towards him he falls in love with her and the same does Polina with Ivan. Ivan now desperately wants Polina to live. But time is running out.
You can look forward to reading an ironic, wise, warm and most of all humorous book. I tend to regard The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko as a new and modern version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Instead, this is about Chernobyl children. Did I forget to tell you that the book is based on a true story? Happy reading.
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