Review: “The Life Impossible” by Matt Haig – A Journey of Rediscovery

“I am not special,” says Grace Winters, the narrator of Matt Haig’s follow-up to his bestseller The Midnight Library. “I am a crotchety old Brit. I am a retired maths teacher from the middle of nowhere. I am a big nothing, is who I am.” But if you’re familiar with Haig’s writing, you’ll know that Grace is far from a big nothing. When she unexpectedly finds herself on the island of Ibiza, she soon realizes how special she truly is.

A small, long-ago act of kindness towards her colleague Christina leads Grace to inherit a house in the Balearics through Christina’s will. Puzzled by why a near-unfamiliar colleague would leave her such a gift, Grace—recently widowed and burdened by guilt from the childhood death of her son—decides to visit Ibiza. She intends to find answers about Christina’s drowning there, hoping the distraction might ease her own grief.

Arriving at a dilapidated house with only a letter from Christina, Grace finds her way to Alberto Ribas, a boisterous diving instructor whom the locals advise her to avoid. On a midnight boat trip, where Alberto promises to reveal what happened the night Christina died, Grace witnesses a mysterious light beneath the ocean—La Presencia. This encounter bestows upon her abilities to read minds, move objects, and live life to its fullest.

With these newfound skills, Grace sets out to solve the mystery of Christina’s death. Her journey takes her through the island’s ecosystem, ultimately leading to money-hungry developers who threaten to destroy everything.

If The Life Impossible were to be labeled, it would almost certainly be magic realism, a delightful oxymoron like “cosy crime.” Haig asks readers to suspend disbelief and accept the powers of La Presencia and the extraordinary gifts it grants Grace. His writing is so persuasive that you easily do so, much like discovering a secret staircase in your home, revealing entirely new rooms to explore and making the rest of the house make more sense.

On the surface, The Life Impossible is a story of contrasts. Grace moves from a bleak bungalow in Lincoln to solve a mystery on the vibrant island of Ibiza. As her unlikely friendship with Alberto develops, her mathematical mind begins to embrace the improbable, liberating her from anhedonia—transforming her from feeling nothing to feeling everything. One particularly memorable scene is when Grace, now capable of sensing the distress of lobsters in a restaurant tank, uses her mind to smash the glass, allowing the crustaceans to scuttle back to the ocean past baffled diners. If you’re going to experiment with telekinesis, that’s a commendable start.

As the story progresses and Christina’s death poses a threat to the island itself, the lines between contrasts blur. Science melds into art and mathematics dissolves into the natural world. The many seemingly disparate references Haig sprinkles throughout, from Nostradamus to Freddie Mercury, Shakespeare to Hill Street Blues, start to intertwine. The only way Grace can save herself—and the island—is by embracing these connections. “It is vast and magnificent, this sequence,” Alberto explains as he and Grace watch the sunset over the island. “It connects you to every single thing in this universe.”

Haig’s wise and moving novel stands as both a mystery and a love story, a fantasy, and a tribute to our planet. Perhaps its greatest gift is showing us it’s possible to dismantle the boundaries we’ve created, grasp previously hidden connections, and appreciate life in all its richness. And coming to realize that magic realism isn’t an oxymoron after all.

Source: The Guardian