If You Could See Me Now (Cecelia Ahern)*****

Invisible friends are real! I always knew it and Cecelia Ahern proves it in this amazing book. It’s about Elizabeth, who is unsociable and works far too hard (just like Elisabeth in Seeing Me Naked and Elizabeth in An Absolute Scandal), her six year old nephew Luke, who is sweet if scarily self-contained (a bit like Luke in the Shopaholic books), and their invisible friend, Ivan.

Ivan is the perfect friend. He makes friends with children who are unhappy, and helps them to overcome their problems. I’m quite surprised it was published in a way. If any non-invisible men started hanging round children like that, they’d probably be arrested, but the last thing you’d call Ivan is a paedophile. He’s a bit like a child himself. He loves swivelly chairs. He loves sliding on the grass and playing with toy fire engines. And he doesn’t like playing with girls. In many ways, he’s more like a six year old than Luke is.

Elizabeth and Ivan don’t think much of each other at first. To Ivan, Elizabeth is no more than an uptight, bossy adult who refuses to believe he exists. To Elizabeth, Ivan is just her nephew’s invisible friend - something to be very concerned about, but not someone who actually exists. Even when she meets Ivan for herself, Elizabeth (not unsurprisingly) assumes that he’s the inspiration for Luke’s friend, rather than the man himself.

Both of them are emotionally stunted in their way. Elizabeth is closed off from caring about others – her parents and younger sister Saoirse have continually made her unhappy, and she has trouble expressing love towards Luke. Ivan lives in a platonic world where there appear to be no such things as romance and sex. While his experience and intelligence have taught him a lot about people, his outlook on life is childish in many ways. Slowly Elizabeth and Ivan begin to appreciate one another’s different qualities. Elizabeth needs to learn to relax and have fun, and there are times when even Ivan needs to take life seriously.

Few couples in fiction are more deserving of happiness. Elizabeth has been denied it for too long, and Ivan has never really thought about it before. Watching them fall in love is great because you can see exactly what’s happening, but they don’t do it in the normal, boring, conventional way. They’re not boring, normal, conventional people, and one of the strengths of this book is that they never lose their individuality. But, as with any storybook romance, there are problems to be overcome.

One reason I love the book is because a lot of the characters all seem to be a bit autistic, like me. Elizabeth is isolated and unsociable, and has trouble with the concept of games, particularly imaginary ones (I love imaginary games, but that’s supposed to be unusual). She doesn’t feel comfortable with the idea of friendships because of the time and effort it’s going to take. (It can be a serious mental effort to remember all the conversational conventions that don’t come naturally. Friendship can still be very rewarding, but an acquaintance based on nothing but proximity is mentally exhausting.) The people whose friendship Elizabeth appreciates are those who might sometimes endeavour to change her views, but nevertheless show respect for her as an individual.

Ivan is immature for an adult (like me), although at times he can look at things in a logical and detached way (also an autistic trait). He’s pretty much asexual (me too, probably: I love flirting, but genitals are pretty disgusting, aren’t they?), and his interest in Elizabeth all the more moving because he obviously isn’t after a shag. Even though Ivan is in the business of making friends and supporting people, the friendships only last for as long as the support is needed, and after that there’s no further contact. In some ways, Ivan’s relationships are more like doctor/patient relationships than genuine friendships. Once the person he is helping is feeling better, they no longer see Ivan – literally as well as figuratively, so the task is clearly completed, and it’s time to move on. If I was like Ivan, I could play lots of games to get to know people instead of faffing about with all this adult ‘how are you, I’m fine’ business which seems a bit pointless when you’re supposed to say you’re fine whether you are or not. The people with whom Ivan forms friendships are children like Luke and similarly struggling adults like Elizabeth and Saoirse, neither of whom socialise on a typical adult level (Luke comes closest), and also the people in his own world, where his motives and feelings are always understood. It is likely they wouldn’t be understood by most adults, who would naturally be very concerned about this strange man hanging around the kids, and they would probably find his playful language inappropriate because it doesn’t follow normal conversational rules.

Saoirse has acquaintances that come and go, but no obvious friendships, Elizabeth appearing to be the only constant in her life. Some might see Saoirse as mistrustful and aggressive, but maybe she’s just very desperate and needy, yet without the social confidence to be able to express that she needs help. To me, she seems more like someone who doesn’t understand people than someone who hates them. It’s never explained why Saoirse can see Ivan – until meeting Elizabeth, the only people to have seen him were the children he was helping – but I suspect it’s because Saoirse is quite seriously emotionally stunted as well, as well as being undeniably in need of help. Saoirse has given birth to Luke, but has failed to bond with him. It seems to me as though it’s her constant inability to understand the world that leads her to behave so badly – and to be able to see Ivan. The one weakness of the book is that Saoirse’s storyline is never resolved, but a number of flashbacks help you to see how life has gone so wrong for Saoirse (and Elizabeth), despite all Elizabeth’s attempts to look after her. Saoirse could have been the villain character, but she seems more unhappy, confused and lost than horrible. Not that I’d want her turning up drunk at my house, but, as a character, I love her.

The story is mostly told from Elizabeth’s point of view and Ivan’s, but occasionally we see Elizabeth as others see her. Unusually, some of the sections from Ivan’s point of view are told in the third person, and some in the first person. It’s not clear why, but it does work quite well. Most of the time, the first person sections are when Ivan addresses the reader directly – it’s almost as though the whole book is in the third person, and the first person sections are effectively in speech marks. If the sections had had actual speech marks, the book might well have seemed clumsier – speech marks can become quite confusing where the speaker starts recounting conversations – and in a way speech marks could have had a distancing effect because writers don’t use speech marks as a rule when addressing their readers.

This book shows you that there is more to love than sex. That you can learn from other people, including those who are different from you. That it’s okay to be a bit different, but it is possible learn the things you want to learn, however impossible they seem. And, above all, that there is nothing wrong with having invisible friends. Because most of them are real anyway.