I think I'm officially a Cecilia Ahern fan. I loved every bit of this book. It's even more entertaining than P.S. I Love You (but then again.... P.S. I Love You was more of an emotional roller-coaster ride, while this was more about growing up & learning to have fun).
In essence, it's about imaginary friends / invisible friends & in this book he's called Ivan (there are more, but the friend of the main characters is him). It's written as if imaginary friends actually exists & I would say at least half of the book is narrated by / written based on Ivan's thoughts. They are always visible to children because adults are always too fixated on what is right vs. what is not / acceptable vs. taboo / sane vs. mental illness. If an adult sees unbelievable imageries - they put it down to stress / worse - they're going bananas!
Well Elizabeth is 1 of the many adults who refuse to accept that there's such an existance as imaginary friends, when her nephew (whom she's taking care of because her sister is too free-spirited to care for her own son - whom the sis doesn't even know who the father is) started "seeing" someone called Ivan. Elizabeth is 1 of those very uptight, very serious / no nonsence & loves structure over letting things be... aka Control Freak.
Ivan is the direct opposite. He may be as "old" as Elizabeth in appearance but he loves to play! He takes nothing seriously (except making his friends happy & helping them through a rough patch). He & his friends (Opal, Olivia, Calendula, Tommy, Bobby, Jamie-Lynn to name a few) are fr the land of "Ekam Eveileb" (which actually means something.... but will not disclose it in case I accidentally spoil the whle book for you) & their mission is to make friends... They have a set of code of conducts & Opal being their wise leader will guide them along the way to help the children that they be-friended.
Many things happened along the way which I'll not write here, but suffice to say Elizabeth (& surprisingly Ivan too) was changed from this friendship. Oh yes... forgot to mention that she did managed to see him at some point but mistook him as her nephew's friend's father - despite all the facts that Ivan tells her - e.g.
- his name - Ivan, is the same name as her nephew's imaginary friend's name - Ivan!
- he loves olives; which is "co-incidentally" her nephew's imaginary friend's favourite
- his surname is "Elbisivni" which she thought was Russian (try reading it backwards)
- She tried Googling Ekam Eveiled & can't find such a place on the World map
etc.... etc....
A good read... If you wanna borrow it, drop me a note. Take good care of it though...
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