The Life Impossible

Matt Haig’s novel The Life Impossible was originally published by Viking in September 2024. The novel displays Haig’s characteristic voice and style and combines elements of fantasy and realism. The Life Impossible is primarily set on Spain’s island of Ibiza, where Haig has lived for extended periods. His connection with the novel’s setting informs his main character Grace Winters’s time on the island. When 72-year-old Grace discovers that her former colleague left her a house in Ibiza, she impulsively decides to leave her home in Lincolnshire, England, to explore the Spanish tourist destination. The novel employs both the present and past tenses and toys with conventional notions of the linear plotline. Throughout the narrative, Grace relays her recent transformative experiences to her former student Maurice Augustine via email. The novel is thus written from Grace’s first-person point of view and employs direct address. Grace’s encounters with natural settings and new people during her time in Ibiza inspire the novel’s thematic explorations of The Journey From Grief to Healing, The Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Happiness, and The Intersection of Aging and Self-Exploration.

This guide refers to the 2024 Viking hardback edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss the deaths of loved ones and grief and mention alcohol abuse.

Plot Summary

After the protagonist, 72-year-old Grace Winters, receives an email from her former student Maurice Augustine, she shares her recent experiences with him in the form of a manuscript. She relates to Maurice’s despondent state of mind and tells him that she hopes her story will help him.

Grace begins her story when she’s living alone in her Lincolnshire bungalow. She is a retired mathematics teacher and spends all her time by herself. Since her husband Karl’s death four years prior, she’s been disengaged from life and feels incapable of doing anything besides watching television and playing word games. One day, she receives a solicitor’s note informing her that her former colleague, Christina van der Berg, has died and left Grace her house in Ibiza, Spain. Grace thinks that she’s too old to travel to the island but makes the impulsive decision to do so anyway after she has surgery on her legs.

When Grace arrives in Ibiza, Christina’s house underwhelms her. However, the house has a strange atmosphere that also piques Grace’s curiosity. She discovers an olive jar filled with water that glows. Every time she dumps it out, the jar refills itself. Then, she notices that an extinct flower has bloomed right outside the front door. These events intrigue her. Grace also finds a letter from Christina that implies that she knew that she was going to die. Unable to leave a question unanswered, Grace sets out to solve the mystery of her friend’s mysterious death.

Grace’s explorations lead her to Atlantis Scuba, a diving company that Christina’s friend Alberto Ribas owns. Alberto has an off-putting personality but promises Grace if she goes diving with him at midnight, she’ll discover everything she wants to know. During the dive, Grace encounters a glowing light that blooms and clouds around her. In her emails, she tells Maurice that seeing the light wakes her up to her life.

After the dive, Alberto tells Grace that the light is La Presencia, a mystical force that has imbued her with telekinetic and clairvoyant powers. Grace is skeptical but soon discovers that she can indeed read people’s minds, sense animals’ emotions, and control objects’ behaviors. Alberto assures her that these powers are positive and that Christina would want her to use them to help others. Christina had the same gifts and thus predicted that someone wanted to kill her. To avoid her murder, she went to Salacia, an underwater planet.

Unnerved, Grace insists that she isn’t special and has no capacity for good. In 1992, Grace’s son, Daniel, died when he was riding his bike in the rain. Grace still blames herself and uses Daniel’s death as evidence of her depravity. She races to the airport and almost buys a ticket back to England. Then, she reads a doctor’s mind and realizes that Alberto is dying of cancer. She decides to stay in Ibiza and help her new friend as best as possible.

In the following hours, Alberto introduces Grace to his daughter, Marta. Marta explains that before Christina’s disappearance, she was trying to stop the real estate mogul Art Butler from building a new resort on the island and endangering local ecosystems. Marta suspects that Art was going to kill Christina and insists that she must continue Christina’s mission. She implores Grace and Alberto to use their powers to aid her. The companions agree. They visit a local nightclub and round up thousands of people to attend the anti-development protest the next morning. During the event, Grace summons the Ibiza wildlife. Countless animals storm the press conference where Art is waiting to be interviewed, and a snake bites and kills him. Afterward, local politician Sofía Torres withdraws her support from Art’s development company.

Ten days later, Grace and Marta say goodbye to Alberto on his deathbed. They scatter his ashes at sea and celebrate his life together. Grace decides to stay in Ibiza for the indefinite future. She believes that she’s needed on the island. In another email, she tells Maurice that he can have her bungalow in England, as she knows how a house can change a life. Maurice writes back, thanking Grace for her gift and her story, and promises to come to visit her in Ibiza soon.