Hard but beautiful book this one by Scott Stambach,
I remember the panic, I remember the question: "Should we continue to drink milk?" I was an addicted. We live in an area where we plant veggies, where we keep animals. Radioactive exactly as us... What to do? People hadn't to touch, theoretically soil that days because "infected" by radiations. Radiations that will stay with us for other 20 years.
They were surreal days, and scaring instants, I can confirm it. Then, of course, we all decided that, simply, we had to go on. Planting, and farming and harvesting, without to forget, but at the same time continuing to live this existence.
Now: of course the most negative effects, the more "visibles" and absolutely devastating and catastrophics ones, interested and are still interesting Ukrainians; nuclear radiations remain for 50 and more years creating various, diversified damages, including changements, significative ones, of the DNA of people.
OK: let's breath some bit.
This one is the story of an abandoned baby, Ivan grown up, without after all any possibility of escapism from that place in a special institute, hospital in Mazyr, Bielorussia.
As many other babies, when he was born, what the mother saw was a little monster, missing of some part of his body and with terrible deformations. Horrified, she didn't want that baby.
The only escapism Ivan knows is reading and later writing; this one is his story, written in first person; for a purpose. Keeping alive Polina his big love, a teenager with wich he shares the love for reading and the love that a teen-ager feels for another one, although that spirit is incapsulated in a deformed state.
Not only: Polina will mean for him a new hope for his future. A big motivation for going on.
Oh yes, Ivan fantasized often of the possibility, impossible of going away, escape, searching for another life, but he knew his difficulties, he knew his big disabilities, and he knew that that dream was an impossible one.
Love, sometimes is in grade of curing the most profound sufferances and it was what happened to Ivan.
Ivan thanks to Polina will experience a different reason for living in that hospital.
It is absolutely true that children live the hospitalization with much more lightness than not adults. I know that because I experienced a lot of little problematics when little and most of the time I was to the hospital, but there was always a reason for being happy. A new doll, a lot of books and magazines, the games with other children, the love and friendship of nurses and doctors still in my heart. In the sufferance, children don't feel the sufferance. It's a game, like another one.
A nurse will be like a mother for Ivan, encouraging him, trying to keep him alive and at the end she will donate him the sense of normality bringing him in a more comfy environment...
Beautiful; it is a book I felt a lot. I cried a lot.
It is hard; you will feel the sufferance of Ivan, the sufferance of the other guests, with abnormality that you would want simply to delete, giving back to them their dignity and a decent body where to spend with dignity their possibly and hopefully, long existence. Let's try to be optimistic.
I suffered for the condition of ineluctability of the destiny of Ivan, Polina and the other children.
It's terrible to see people dying, I can tell you; it's terrible to see that soon or late, these children will die, because of a human condition too hard, without any kind of possible chance in this existence, if not waiting to leave the body that are keeping prisoners their free spirits.
Prisoners by a destiny too big to them; by a fact that they didn't cause, but that meant to them their curse and their damnation on this Earth.
I want to spend few words for the author. Feelings are filtered with great maturity and the voice of Ivan resonates at his best, donating a complete portrait of the existence of a teenager, a kid, in these hospitals, let's remember specials. It's a voice that will penetrate in your soul for staying there and if you didn't know what happened to the people of Ukraine and closest countries, now, you will have a perfect picture of it. It's horrible and dramatic. Medical informations, daily routine, reading this book I felt a sensation of great impotence and a big desire: the one of hugging that teen-ager, because when it is too much it's too much.
I thank Marsilio Editori for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
Hard but beautiful book this one by Scott Stambach, La vita invisibile di Ivan Isaenko, The Invisible Life of Ivano Isaenko. Cernobyl: it was terrifying what happened in the area. It was April 26 1986 and Europe was still experiencing a positive moment. No one would have never imagined that in Ukraine there would have been a terrible tragedy like that one lived, and not communicated, I would want to remark this, in the immediate! in grade of affecting per decades with cancers, illness of various kind and deformations the existences of European people.
I remember the panic, I remember the question: "Should be continue to drink milk?" I was an addicted. We live in an area where we plant veggies. What to do? People hadn't to touch, theoretically soil that days because "infected" by radiations. Radiations that will stay with us for other 20 years.
They were surreal days, and scaring instants, I can confirm it. Then, of course, we all decided that, simply, we had to go on. Planting, and farming and harvesting, without to forget, but at the same time continuing to live this existence.
Now: of course the most negative effects, the more "visibles" and absolutely devastating and catastrophics ones, interested and are still interesting Ukrainians; nuclear radiations remain for 50 and more years creating various, diversified damages, including changements, significative ones, of the DNA of people.
OK: let's breath some bit.
This one is the story of an abandoned baby, Ivan grown up, without after all any possibility of escapism from that place in a special institute, hospital in Mazyr, Bielorussia.
As many other babies, when he was born, what the mother saw was a little monster, missing of some part of his body and with terrible deformations. Horrified, she didn't want that baby.
The only escapism Ivan knows is reading and later writing; this one is his story, written in first person; for a purpose. Keeping alive Polina his big love, a teenager with wich he shares the love for reading and the love that a teen-ager feels for another one, although that spirit is incapsulated in a deformed state.
Not only: Polina will mean for him a new hope for his future. A big motivation for going on.
Oh yes, Ivan fantasized often of the possibility, impossible of going away, escape, searching for another life, but he knew his difficulties, he knew his big disabilities, and he knew that that dream was an impossible one.
Love, sometimes is in grade of curing the most profound sufferances and it was what happened to Ivan.
Ivan thanks to Polina will experience a different reason for living in that hospital.
It is absolutely true that children live the hospitalization with much more lightness than not adults. I know that because I experienced a lot of little problematics when little and most of the time I was to the hospital, but there was always a reason for being happy. A new doll, a lot of books and magazines, the games with other children, the love and friendship of nurses and doctors still in my heart. In the sufferance, children don't feel the sufferance. It's a game, like another one.
A nurse will be like a mother for Ivan, encouraging him, trying to keep him alive and at the end she will donate him the sense of normality bringing him in a more comfy environment...
Beautiful; it is a book I felt a lot. I cried a lot.
It is hard; you will feel the sufferance of Ivan, the sufferance of the other guests, with abnormality that you would want simply to delete, giving back to them their dignity and a decent body where to spend with dignity their possibly and hopefully, long existence. Let's try to be optimistic.
I suffered for the condition of ineluctability of the destiny of Ivan, Polina and the other children.
It's terrible to see people dying, I can tell you; it's terrible to see that soon or late, these children will die, because of a human condition too hard, without any kind of possible chance in this existence, if not waiting to leave the body that are keeping prisoners their free spirits.
Prisoners by a destiny too big to them; by a fact that they didn't cause, but that meant to them their curse and their damnation on this Earth.
I want to spend few words for the author. Feelings are filtered with great maturity and the voice of Ivan resonates at his best, donating a complete portrait of the existence of a teenager, a kid, in these hospitals, let's remember specials. It's a voice that will penetrate in your soul for staying there and if you didn't know what happened to the people of Ukraine and closest countries, now, you will have a perfect picture of it. It's horrible and dramatic. Medical informations, daily routine, reading this book I felt a sensation of great impotence and a big desire: the one of hugging that teen-ager, because when it is too much it's too much.
I thank Marsilio Editori for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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