Ivy and Abe by Elizabeth Enfield

Ivy and Abe were meant to meet in every universe, but the question is: were they meant to be together? In Ivy and Abe, Elizabeth Enfield writes about two people and how their destinies were meant to intertwine across the span of seventy years. In each chapter, Ivy and Abe meet somehow and in each story, they are in a slightly different period of their lives. This book showed me an element of the universe I had never explored before and I was absolutely enchanted! It travels through all the potential what-ifs that you may first think about when meeting someone new, whether it be a new friend, a partner or a long-lost friend from your childhood. If you had met them a day earlier, a week or even a year, what might have happened? The possibilities are endless. The characters Ivy and Abe were so engaging that you could perceive every emotion they were feeling throughout, which made them all the more loveable.

Another element of the book that I loved was that all the stories have different parts that interconnect with each other, making the story coherent from start to finish, even if in each chapter, we are travelling through a different, parallel universe. I do not want to give anything away but if you do end up reading the book, watch out for the hay! In my opinion, these glimpses of commonalities create a sense of reality, which keeps the book convincing. The book is therefore tenable because their lives do not alter to the point in which they are totally unrelated, they only alter slightly, by a matter of simply timings in which Ivy and Abe met.

Not only does the story have an incredibly romantic storyline, it also faces important questions on the meaning of life but also the fragility of it all. It also makes you reflect on your future, fate and destiny. Could destiny and fate be real or is it merely coincidence? But also, does it really matter?

Each chapter begins with a short quote that reveals a part of the story/parallel universe we are about to uncover. One of my favourite extracts is:

“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves. And when one meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment…” (Plato, The Symposium).

This book is so beautiful. It makes you dream beyond any world we may have ever travelled and absorbs you into each parallel universe Enfield takes you to. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a fiction, especially romantic ones.