The Life Impossible jumped out at me as I idly looked through netgalley, and I thank the publisher for the chance to read it. It’s the third Matt Haig book I’ve read, and he’s written loads more! It’ll take me a while to get through them.
The Life Impossible
by Matt Haig
“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, thisis a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning. (Goodreads)
My Review
Like Matt Haig’s earlier book, How to Stop Time, the author seems to get inside my life and ask me several very important questions. In the case of The Life Impossible, he finds a seventy-something widow, downsized to a small but comfortable bungalow, who has lost the art of going out and making friends since the Covid lockdown. Okay, I’m not a widow, but I understand living alone.
So after this uncomfortable start, I thoroughly endorse her choice to set off to Ibiza to discover the house she’s been left by an ex-colleague who she hardly remembers.
The story unfolds through an epistolary letter to a former pupil who has emailed her for advice. This gets lost in the narrative until occasional asides by Grace to her correspondent. These can jar, but also provide an element of punctuation to her tale. And it’s a wondrous one, combining island history, ecology and local life with big money machinations, lies and intrigue. And something mysterious, or is it mystical?
I was totally engrossed in this book. It has the light and freshness of a Mediterranean island combined with dark secrets and intriguing powers. And as I write this, I realise: I really must read the Life Impossible again.
And I love the cover.
A great review of the book Jemima and it sounds intriguing 💜
Very intriguing review of an intriguing book, Jemima. Sounds like something I should dip my toes into.
Hi,
More TBR ? I’d love to be totally engrossed.
Thanks again
I, too, love the cover, and it sounds like a book I need to read. I just looked back at your review of How to Stop Time and see I put it on my TBR list, but never followed up. I’m putting the books on my library TBR list–that seems to be the place where I actually follow through.