Book Summary and Reviews of The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

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Cloggie Downunder

Just wonderful!
“Everything can be beautiful with the right eyes and ears. Every genre of music. Every sorrow and every pleasure. Every inhale and exhale. Every guitar solo. Every voice. Every plant beside the tarmac.”

The Life Impossible is the eleventh novel by award-winning British author, Matt Haig. It’s a heartfelt email from a former student that prompts retired high school mathematics teacher, Grace Winters to document her recent life-changing experience in Ibiza. She begins by describing the sad, lonely life of a virtually penniless widow whose guilt over the death of her son cemented the belief that she was a bad person. Poor behaviour followed.

She’s shocked to learn she has inherited a villa on the island of Ibiza from Christina van der Berg, a teacher to whom she long ago showed some small amount of kindness. With no reason to stay in Lincoln, she packs a bag and flies over, if only to check the place out and, maybe, to find out more about how Christina died, for which there has, so far only been a vague explanation: lost at sea.

But the uncharming villa located on a busy road is dusty, stale, a bit humid. At least there is a Fiat Panda for transport. A letter left by Christina suggests places to visit, including an exhortation to go scuba diving with Alberto Rivas at Atlantis Scuba. And to go dancing! At seventy-two, Grace considers doing either of these would be folly. The letter also hints that Christina knew she was going to die.

An examination of her villa reveals: the expected reading matter except for, unusually, a book on clairvoyancy; a wall of photos of Christina with her ex-husband and daughter, as well as celebrities in nightclubs where she sang; an olive jar full of seawater that seems to refill itself; and a strange yellow flower outside the door.

But as she talks to people on the island who knew Christina, who all seem to be expecting her, a picture emerges of a woman estranged from her adult daughter (a well-known DJ), a woman who had a popular stall at the hippy market telling fortunes, an activist who vocally campaigns against developments that threaten to damage the island’s sensitive environment. But Grace begins to feel like she’s been set up, recruited, especially when she meets the man who might know what happened to Christina.

Ultimately, she does end up diving, down to the oldest living organism on Earth, the Posidonia seagrass, dancing at a disco, attending a protest rally, and gambling for high stakes at the casino. She does quite a lot of unusual eavesdropping and ends up in an extraordinary showdown with a developer. She offers her former student a fantastical story that begins “I have never believed in magic, and I still don’t. But sometimes what looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet” and says he can believe or reject as he wishes.

She also offers a bunch of wise words and insightful observations that anyone can apply to their life, telling the young man “When things are wrong, we need to reach rock bottom in order for change to happen. We sometimes need to feel trapped in order to find the way out” and that the ultimate lesson is “leave a door open in your mind to possibility. We are never at the finish line of understanding. There is always something about life and the universe that we are still to discover.”

Alberto observes “Reality is merely an illusion. A very persistent one. Sometimes the illusion is the reality we don’t understand yet” while Grace notes “sometimes we can’t accept the truth that is right in front of our eyes. And that sometimes the mad people of one era become the sages of the next.” Matt Haig never fails to fascinate, to make his reader think, and to evoke strong emotions. Just wonderful!
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Canongate.

Labmom55

Too much woo-woo for me
I’m not a big fan of magical realism, but I had enjoyed The Midnight Library. So, I was willing to give The Life Impossible a chance. But the issues I had with The Midnight Library, philosophical ideas that were too simplistic and obvious, are magnified here. Haig tries to cover it all up with a lot of over complicated magical nonsense and mathematical equations.
Grace Williams is a 72 year old retired teacher who inherits a house in Ibiza from a woman she barely knew. The woman had died under mysterious circumstances. Grace can’t help but try to investigate what happened to this woman. But the book isn’t primarily a mystery. It veers from magical realism into the realms of fantasy. The longer it went on, the less I liked it. You have to have a real tolerance for the woowoo aspect to enjoy this. I don’t.
The story is told in the form of an email she sends to a former student, who is depressed over the loss of his mother. I struggled with the format as it came across as disjointed and lacking a sense of focus.
There’s also a decided lack of tension or energy to the book. It just sort of plods along until the very end. I was listening to this and I found myself speeding it up just to get it over with.
I can’t fault Joanna Lumley, she does an admirable job as the narrator.

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