Book review: Matt Haig’s books brim with a universal kind of love. Take two hugely successful examples. The memoir, Reasons Not To Die, the English writer’s honest account of his struggle with and triumph over the depression he suffered in his 20s, is both wise and warm. The Midnight Library combines magical realism with the message that you should appreciate the life you have, whatever your regrets. The Life impossible, Haig’s 12th book for adults (he also writes for children) is something of a follow-up and very much in the same vein.
Seventy-two-year-old maths teacher Grace Winters’ life since retirement has diminished to almost nothing. She grieves and suffers guilt about the death of her son 30 years ago, and the more recent death of her husband. Grace has anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. “It didn’t have the intensity of depression. It was just a lack.” Cue a letter arriving out of the blue informing her that she’s been left a property in Ibiza by Christina, an ex-colleague who had moved there decades ago and died recently in mysterious circumstances.
One of Grace’s saving attributes is her curiosity; she “couldn’t see a question without pursuing an answer”. She goes to Ibiza to investigate Christina’s death and find out why this casual acquaintance left her a house.
There, Grace’s life quickly becomes more peopled, more vibrant. She is befriended by Alberto, an ageing hippy, and together they uncover a collaboration between business and political figures that would result in damage to the precious seagrass which lies below the Mediterranean between Ibiza and a sacred rock. Christina had been working to expose the scheme, involving the construction of a luxury hotel on the rock, and had seemingly died while scuba diving.
Grace decides to follow Christina’s lead. Deep underwater, she encounters a shape-shifting blue light. The force grants her supernatural powers. Grace can now read the thoughts of every living being she encounters. Tastes, colours, textures, nature – all of life becomes gloriously beautiful to her and she can suddenly feel everything. “It was exhilarating and terrifying and I wondered if I might die from it.”
The novel becomes a sort of extended riff on poet William Blake’s exhortation to “see a world in a grain of sand … hold infinity in the palm of your hand”, the paranormal aspects encouraging us to see the miraculous in the commonplace. It’s a hotchpotch of genres: part thriller, part magical realism, part late-life coming-of-age story. The thriller aspect, involving murderous capitalists and venal politicians, is resolved satisfactorily, if with heavy reliance on the fantastical elements.
The emotional core of the novel – Grace’s gradual journey towards joy through being alive to the miracle of the everyday – is its most striking aspect. Grace, enjoyably ornery and very “maths teacher” with her fondness for talking about the Fibonacci sequence, is a worthy heroine. Hippy Alberto, his misanthropic goat and activist daughter add humour and life, and we end up caring about them all.
Haig really knows his stuff when it comes to both melancholia and uplift. He manages to combine all the elements here to make for a warm, entertaining and pleasingly bonkers read. Fans will not be disappointed, newcomers may be converted.
The Life Impossible, by Matt Haig (Canongate, $36.99) is out now.
