I finally finished my first Cecelia Ahern novel! No, it's not P. S. I Love You (which is still sitting in my shelf waiting to be read after a gazillion months, oopsie). Since I already kinda knew how P. S. I Love You is gonna go (depending on how faithful the movie was to the book, hehe), I opted to read her third novel first, the one entitled If You Could See Me Now, mainly because of the mysterious plot summary.The book is about this guy named Ivan who is only visible to a little boy named Luke and his mothering aunt Elizabeth. He is what our world would call an invisible friend, who by convention should only be seen by kids but incidentally is seen by Elizabeth as well. What follows is a love story of the childlike, fairy tale kind, but with a reasonable amount of realism blended in that it doesn't seem too incredulous.
The novel felt long that it took me more than a month and a half to finally finish it (no, I wasn't reading the whole time :P), and it only seemed to pick up steam towards the middle of the book. Nonetheless, I was very much curious about how Elizabeth and Ivan will handle their growing affection (read: L-O-V-E) for each other despite their impossible situation. Would it be like City of Angels, with Ivan choosing to embrace humanity over his immortal, invisible friend status? Or was he merely preparing Elizabeth for eventually ending up like him, an invisible friend too? Of course, these are the two most typical possibilities, and Cecelia Ahern is more than typical. Or rather, she was typical in more ways than one.
If you really wanna know...
She eventually wrapped up the story by bringing things back in perspective, and back to reality, with Ivan turning invisible again, leaving Elizabeth by herself. Which is in fact the most realistic progression of things. Nevertheless, losing someone is always a sad, seemingly unacceptable thing especially when things feel right, perfect and meant to be, only to be riddled with the impossible. While the book dedicated two paragraphs on the nature of heartbreak (that I'd rather not quote because while it's nice, it cannot rival Stephenie Meyer's New Moon heartbreak quote anyway), there was not that much focus on sadness but the silver lining of things. Because indeed, sometimes people come into our lives to serve a purpose, and it could be as simple as making us realize a thing or two about ourselves, or pinpoint a much needed change like a breath of fresh air or a splash of color. And we also need to appreciate that amidst the struggle to come to terms with our sadness.
Unfortunately, in some cases, the why does not often come as quickly or as clearly as it did with Elizabeth and Ivan. Sometimes, the best thing to hope for is that one day our dark cloud's silver lining becomes apparent. Or sometimes, as Ivan so simplistically put it, the silver lining are the people themselves.
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