Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko (Stambach) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko...then take off on your own:

1. In a confrontation with Nurse Natalya, Ivan says he would rather be mentally "deficient" than mentally cogent living at Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children. Natalya responds that "self-awareness is what makes life worth living." What do you think?

2. Why does Ivan work so hard to learn how to change Max's diaper? Why is the two-year-old so important to him that he takes Polina to see him?

3. What is the state of Ivan's faith? He says he once believed "there was a set amount of bad to be distributed to all people." What made him question, even change, his belief in the fairness of the world? Another time he asks Natalya, "Should I be angry with God?" Natasha says, "God didn't do this to you, Ivan."  What would you say to Ivan to answer his doubts?

4. Talk about Nurse Natalya, Ivan says she is the closest person to a mother he has ever had. Why is her kindness so rare? Consider the myriad duties of nurses at the Mazyr Hospital. Does that kind of overloaded schedule sap one's ability to sympathize? Might there be other reasons (of course, the author never develops any of the personalities, but we're allowed to conjecture on our own).

5. The unfairness of Dr. Ridick's ability to cure the "heart-hole" children is a conflicting emotion for Ivan. Talk about his feelings toward them. He paraphrases Nabokov: "the world needs happy endings no matter how unethical." (See quote below.) Why does Ivan draw upon that quotation? How, in his mind, does it apply to the ethics of curing the heart-hole children?

6. What are the Interlopers, and why is Ivan wary of them?

7. Ivan considers Polina an Interloper, at first. Talk about Ivan's initial reactions to her: he hates—and fears—her the very moment he lays eyes on her. Why? He lists his reasons for despising her, one of which is that "she obliterated the edges of my world." What does he mean by that phrase? More to the point: what do the particular reasons for his hatred—to say nothing of the list itself—reveal about Ivan?

8. (Follow-up to Question 7): A few pages later, after he discovers Polina reading Gogol, Ivan says of her:

[S]he was someone who could see my reality and reflect it back to me. She was someone who could make me feel I was not just a ghost haunting the hallways.

What does Ivan mean, and why is it so disturbing to him?

9. The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko has numerous moments of humor, sometimes to the point of hilarity. Consider the episodes with his therapists, particularly with Dr. Moisey Sokolov who he treats as the patient. What other comments, conversations, or observations of Ivan's do you find funny?

10. One of the most poignant chapters of the book concerns Ivan's mother, or the mother he envisions. Talk about his ideal and what it reveals about Ivan's state.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

The actual quote is from Nabokov's 1953 novel Pnin: "Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically."

top of page (summary)