“Reality is not always probable or probable.” That’s the quote from the late Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges that introduces Matt Haig’s new novel, “The Life Impossible.” If you fundamentally object to it, don’t turn the page.
But if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief when reading fiction, this is a compelling story. Some readers, like my teenage daughter who devoured Haig’s bestseller “The Midnight Library,” may not sympathize with the seventy-year-old narrator recovering from varicose vein surgery, but the book’s plot quickly takes care of her physical decline.
The action takes place in Ibiza, the Spanish island famous for its nightclubs. When the narrator, Grace Winters, suddenly inherits a dilapidated house there, she leaves her tragic life as a childless and widowed math teacher in England for an adventure. And oh, what an adventure! As Grace charts the fate of a collegiate acquaintance, Christina, who gave her the house, she meets Alberto Ribas, a “once respected marine biologist” who now leads diving tours in the Mediterranean and whom Grace describes as “not so much a pirate but a castaway, with the unkempt hair and beard escaping his face in every direction. During one of those dives, Grace’s life is changed forever by a blue phosphorescent light that she swims towards underwater. ‘La Presencia’ or ‘The Presence’ imbues her with real superpowers, the details of which are too fun to reveal here.
And while the plot proudly strays from reality at this point, it’s not ashamed of it. Grace is a reliable narrator and the structure of the novel is her telling her story to a former student. “Math is… as mysterious and enigmatic as all of life, and expecting it – or anything – to confirm what I wanted it to be was a mistake,” she writes. Grace’s awakening to the wonders of the natural world forms the second half of the story, as she and a cast of characters work to save parts of Ibiza from development.
The entire book will only take an average reader a few hours to read. Really short chapters – some just a sentence long – make the pages fly. And while some may finish the last sentence shaking their heads at the improbability of it all, Grace’s realization that everything on earth is worthy of admiration and preservation is a message the entire world can get behind.
___
AP Book Reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews
