The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

336 pages

Published September 2024 by Penguin Publishing Group 

Publisher's Summary: 

“What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…”

When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.

Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.

My Thoughts: 

"A beautiful novel full of life-affirming wonder and imagination and, at its adventurous heart, a wry and tender love-letter to the best of being human.” —Benedict Cumberbatch

I don't usually put much credence into quotes about books from other authors. Publishers tend to pick authors for quotes who are prone to like the book and writers are likely to want to praise a book, in no small part because they'd like the same done for them. But Benedict Cumberbatch? I doubt he's hoping for a great review of his next film from Haig. 

Still not the reason I picked up this one. I picked this one because my book club read Haig's The Midnight Library and we all really liked it. Why not read his next novel as a club as well? Now I'm honestly question that decision. While The Midnight Library absolutely had a fantasy element, it worked for me as a device between chapters. But in this one the fantasy element is front and center and it's supernatural. I'm not sure how that's going to go over with my book club. I know I struggled with it throughout the book. 

"Once upon a time there was an old woman who lived the most boring life in the universe. 

That woman rarely left her bungalow, except to see the doctor, help at the charity shop, or visit the cemetery. She didn't garden any more. The grass was overgrown, and the flowerbeds were full of weeds. She ordered her weekly shopping. She lived in the Midlands. Lincoln, Lincolnshire. The same orange-bricked market town that she had stayed in - apart from a stint t Hull University centuries ago - all her adult life. 

You know the place."

Grace is a lonely woman, living with grief over the long-ago loss of her son and more recently her husband when she receives the notice that a long-ago acquaintance has left her a home. Grace once did a kindness for Christina, something that seems insignificant to Grace but changed Christina's life. Grace arrives in Ibiza only to discover that what she's inherited is a small, run-down house set far off from the city and has been left a list of things to do in her time on the island. Almost immediately warned to avoid Alberto Rios; but Grace, wanting to know what happened to Christina, soon realizes that Alberto is the only one who can help her find out. So to check something off of her list and because Alberto tells her he will show her what happened to Christina, Grace goes scuba diving with Alberto late one night. What happens leave Grace able to read minds, to have a far reaching knowledge, and the ability to move objects.  Now she must decide what to do with those "gifts" and if she can truly know what happened to Christina and stop the people who were trying to hurt her. 

All of which sounds like a crazy adventure novel. Which it is...kind of. But it is far more about how Grace, who has been battling anhedonia for years and living with the guilt of her son's death, find pleasure in life again and learns to forgive herself. And that is very much the kind of book I enjoy. Strangely, one of the things I really enjoyed about this book was all of the references to mathematics (Grace had been a math teacher) - Haig really uses math to explain how the magical elements in this book just might not be that implausible, but also to explain life. I liked that - I may have to rethink my opinion about math...and maybe magical realism.