IVAN, BORIS AND ME

A woman attempts to reign in her trickster friend in Leonie’s debut novel.

Since childhood, Elodie Ginsberg has been preoccupied with the circus. The 25-year-old illustrator is happiest when painting trapezists and acrobats. She spends each day in conversation with her mysterious friend Boris—a chaotic, childlike clown who’s been her constant companion since kindergarten. Although Boris seems to understand Elodie in a way that her hard-to-please mother never has, he also creates problems of his own. In the book’s opening chapter, for instance, Elodie must rescue Boris from a nearby pond, where he nearly drowns attempting a Harry Houdini–inspired escape trick. Things change when someone new moves into the house next door: a handsome, if standoffish, former professional cyclist named Ivan Lennard. Elodie is excited to have another relatively young person in the mostly elderly neighborhood—she inherited her house from her grandmother—and after an initial, unsuccessful attempt to befriend Ivan, Elodie shows up at his door with lasagna and a mango cake to welcome him to the cul-de-sac. She thinks she can break through Ivan’s shell, but it seems that Boris is bent on sabotaging things with his antics. Can Elodie overcome the intrusive Boris to forge a lasting human connection? Over the course of this novel, Leonie writes with a buoyant, offbeat prose style that effectively evokes the carnivalesque reality in which Elodie and Boris dwell. Here, for instance, Elodie is overwhelmed upon winning second place in an art competition: “I think someone’s talking to me, but I feel like I’m under water and have a tail instead of feet and gills where my ears used to be. I can’t process what they say, and I waddle. Eventually someone presses a sash, a check, and a gift card for a craft store in my hands.” Readers who can tolerate the deliberately maddening Boris will find much to enjoy in this mercurial novel, which shrouds an affecting tale of loneliness and longing in lively whimsy.

A stylish parable about the disconnect between inner and outer worlds.