Running with Ivan by Suzanne Leal

Title: Running with Ivan

Author: Suzanne Leal

Genre: Historical Fiction/Time slip/Holocaust

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 1^st February 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 320

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: Yearning to escape the new family he never wanted, thirteen-year-old Leo Arnold is transported to wartime Europe where he must draw on his courage to save himself and those around him.

From award-winning author Suzanne Leal comes a gripping timeslip novel inspired by true stories.

Thirteen-year-old Leo Arnold hates his life. He doesn’t want a new school, a new house or a new family. And he definitely doesn’t want to be sharing a room with his new stepbrother, Cooper.

What Leo wants is to be somewhere else, far away. So when he uncovers an old music box and turns the key, he is astonished to find himself in Prague, surrounded by whispers and fears of a second world war. A war that ended decades ago.

In Prague, Leo meets Ivan, a Czech boy, and the two become friends. But when World War Two finally erupts, the unimaginable becomes real and the boys are imprisoned. Fearing the worst, Leo and Ivan frantically search for an escape. A search that sends them running.

Running against time.

Running for their lives.

~*~

In 2002, thirteen-year-old Leo Arnold has had to move in with his stepfamily – only two years after the death of his mother. He is forced to share a room with one of his stepbrothers, Cooper, who is less than thrilled. Leo is often ganged up on by Cooper and Troy, and their parents are unaware of what is going on. Whilst Leo is in mourning, he has to cover it all up and watch his father spend time with his stepbrothers, and he feels ignored. Soon he is incited to compete in a running competition and is trained by Mr Livingstone for each competitive level from school comp and beyond.

Still seeking an escape from his new family, to get away from the noise and the bullying, and get away from feeling like he doesn’t belong, Leo finds his way into the storage room, where all the remnants of his former life are kept. As he goes through the boxes, trying to remember and connect with his mother, he finds her old music box. As it plays music, Leo finds himself thrust back through time into the 1930s, leading up to the war. He meets Ivan in Prague in the days before the war, but soon, war breaks out – the Second World War, and on each trip back, Leo is pulled further and further into the war and Ivan’s fate at the hands of the Nazis. And they are running for their lives – running, running. Running from people who want to kill them, and everyone like them.

Running with Ivan is the latest book of many that involve the Holocaust, but where most take place during the war or in a camp, this novel begins in the days before Hitler has taken over Europe, as he is slowly building up to embark on his sweep across Europe, bring war to the world, and finally, send people he doesn’t like to concentration camps. The dark, serious content is dealt with sensitively – and shown through the eyes of a child from the future (2002) and children going through the Holocaust and war, whose responses and knowledge give a gravitas to the novel. Leo, with his knowledge of history, and Ivan, who is living through it and can’t believe what is going on, even though Leo tells him and tries to explain why he keeps disappearing – but nobody believes him. Ivan becomes friends with Leo – and it is their friendship that keeps Ivan going. And that gives Leo the confidence to tell his family how he feels.

Throughout this book running is a theme. Running for your life, running to survive, running from bullies, and running as a sport – they all come together as part of Ivan and Leo’s lives as Leo uses running as a way to stay away from Cooper, to have something of his own that nobody can take away from him. The way that Suzanne has written this book, slipping backwards and forwards through time so seamlessly has been done in a similar way to her adult World War Two book, The Deceptions, but this has the added layer of being a timeslip novel, which gives it immediacy for readers. We are in 2002 and the years between 1934 and 1945, where we are pushed into survival mode with each change, and each new event of the war. For me, it brought another aspect of the war to life and gave it another human fac. In history, we learn the facts, the dates, the locations, and the names of the people who had a big role, like Hitler. And we need to know this. But historical fiction can add to our experience of learning about history because it allows us to see into the past and become a part of it as we go along with the story of people like Ivan, Olinda, and the other kids Leo met at Theresienstadt, and the erasure of cultures, countries and people as the Nazis took over Europe. It parallels other issues and topics about invasions throughout history and shows how easily identity can be erased and how we can find it, and find our place in the world. It also looked at identity – and what it means to be German or Czech, or Jewish – or even a bit of all three at times, as it allowed the characters to be genuine and still left some things up to the imagination. I liked the way the book ended – the hints that were dropped throughout made me wonder if there was another link or way the novel could have ended, but the way it did was very satisfying.