Categories | Women’s Literature & Fiction |
Author | Matt Haig |
Publisher | FABER ET FABER (August 14, 2024) |
Language | English |
Paperback | 324 pages |
Item Weight | 15 ounces |
Dimensions |
6.02 x 1.06 x 9.25 inches |
I. Book introduction
The Life Impossible is a story of contrasts. Grace travels from her bleak bungalow in Lincoln to solve a crime on the most vibrant island in the world. As her unlikely friendship with Alberto progresses, her mathematical mind embraces the improbable, and she is released from anhedonia – going from feeling nothing at all to feeling everything.
“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.
Editorial Reviews
- “A beautiful novel full of life-affirming wonder and imagination and, at its adventurous heart, a wry and tender love-letter to the best of being human.” —Benedict Cumberbatch
- “An odyssey of action and awe. . . a humble and genuinely lovely concept.” —The New York Times
- “Grace’s realization that everything on Earth is worthy of admiration and preservation is a message the whole world can get behind.” —Associated Press
- “Haig’s magnificent latest. . . In [his] sure hands, magic comes to breathtaking life.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
- “Another inspiring page-turner. . . .an adventure-filled tale about the power of new beginnings.” —Woman’s World
- “Haig’s wise and moving novel is both a mystery and a love story, a fantasy and a billet-doux to the planet. Perhaps its greatest gift lies in showing us that it is possible to dismantle the boundaries we have built, grasp the connections previously hidden, and appreciate life in all its richness.” —Joanna Cannon, The Guardian
- “If you’re itching to extend your own summer vacation just a bit, we can’t think of a better book to join you.” —Town & Country
- “A pitched, swashbuckling battle between good and evil. . .With its glorious setting and appealingly quirky cast, The Life Impossible has terrific cinematic potential.” —Christian Science Monitor
- “[A] wonderful book about climate change, aging, and recovering from guilt.” —Book Riot
- “An instantly engrossing, page-turning delight. . . .well worth reading for anyone who wants a hopeful, warm, very human journey that crackles with magic.” —BookPage
- “In a world that seems to be getting more unstable by the moment, Haig’s novels are a steady ship in rough seas. . .the author’s insistence on the power of connection to change lives comes through loud and clear.” —Kirkus
- “Part mystery, part transcendental tale, that takes Grace on a redemptive journey inside nightclubs and the far reaches of Ibiza to the bottom of the ocean and worlds that lie beyond.” —Goodreads
- “[A] wise, inspirational tale.” —PEOPLE
- “Matt Haig will likely continue his streak of success with The Life Impossible. . . . a warm and inviting message. . . that will leave the reader filled with hope by the end.” —Screen Rant
- “Readers can be excited about another deeply human story that reaches in and tugs at your heartstrings, beckoning you to believe in what’s good and offering permission to love the parts of yourself you wish you could change, as Haig appears to strive to do himself.” —SheReads
- “[Haig is] an expert at penning heartwarming, uplifting tales.” —AARP
- “[A] fantastical exploration of grief, forgiveness, and second chances.” —TIME
- “Haig’s writing is as assured and appetising as ever.” —Independent
- “A voyage of self-discovery and what it means to be human.” —Mail on Sunday
- “Haig skillfully and humorously wraps a fantastical tale around his exploration of the transmorative nature of emotions as individuals connect with each other.” —Library Journal
- “An insightful read about how it’s never too late to start over.” —Real Simple
- “Wise, thought-provoking and great on finding connections in unlikely places . . . The descriptions of the Spanish island are so lush and evocative . . . Wonderful.” —Daily Mail
- “There’s a magnificence to Grace’s second act, a whizzing euphoria that feels contagious.” —iNews
- “Matt Haig’s latest novel is a remarkable heroine’s journey, exploring the boundaries of forgiveness, grief, joy, and what it means to be human in a universe where we’re not alone. I adored it.” —J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest
- “Stunning. It’s not only exquisitely written but has so much magic woven through it. A beautiful book for us all to get lost in.” —Fearne Cotton, creator and host of Happy Place
- “I just meant to glance at the book, but it seized me and wouldn’t let me go. Fabulous.” —Joanna Lumley
- “Okay, folks, buckle up. Matt Haig, the wonder, is back.” —Lemn Sissay, poet and author of Let the Light Pour In
- “Weird and fantastical and lush and magical at once.” —Hollie McNish, bestselling author of Slug
About the Author (Matt Haig)
Matt Haig is an author for children and adults. His memoir Reasons to Stay Alive was a number one bestseller, staying in the British top ten for 46 weeks. His children’s book A Boy Called Christmas was a runaway hit and is translated in over 40 languages. It is being made into a film starring Maggie Smith, Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent and The Guardian called it an ‘instant classic’. His novels for adults include the award-winning How To Stop Time, The Radleys, The Humans and the number one bestseller The Midnight Library.
Matt Haig was born on 3 July 1975 in Sheffield. He grew up in the Nottinghamshire town of Newark and later went on to study English and History at the University of Hull.
As of 2015, Haig is married to Andrea Semple, and they live in Brighton, Sussex, with their two children and a dog. The children were homeschooled.
Haig identifies as an atheist. He has said that books are his one true faith, and the library is his church.
Some of Haig’s work — especially part of the non-fiction books — is inspired by the mental breakdown he suffered from when he was 24-years-old. He still occasionally suffers from anxiety. He has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism.
II. Reviewer: The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
Here is a summary of the book Review “The Life Impossible by Matt Haig“. Helps you have the most overview of the book without searching through time. Please access “BookQuote.Net“ regularly or save it to keep track and update the latest information. |
1. TREVOR reviews The Life Impossible
Like the other Matt Haig books I’ve read, I’ll be thinking about The Impossible Life for a while. Probably enjoyed this one the most. It’s one of those books that when you pause after twenty minutes to see how many pages are in the book, it’s not because you’re debating giving up on it, it’s to see how much more entertainment you’ve got left and whether you should reschedule your afternoon.
2. CHARLOTTE EXTON reviews The Life Impossible
I imagine authors don’t read GoodReads reviews but I hope the publishers do, because I don’t often write reviews but I needed to write this.
This book has profoundly impacted me, I needed it. By far my favourite of Matt’s books, and a book I will hold very closely forever. I tried to read it slowly, but I couldn’t, I tried not to fold pages over, but I had to.
Page 44, 303, 312 will be kept folded, for when I need it. Page 226 might be the best page of any book I’ve ever read.
Since being diagnosed with Crohns, I didn’t realize quite how it altered my own thoughts about what life meant, and how numb it made me feel to things going on. This book was cathartic, I learned more and processed more than I think I would have in hours of counselling. Most importantly, I didn’t realize how much I needed to read something that made me want to love life more. I didn’t even thing that was something I wasn’t doing.
Also I really want to see the glowy seagrass.
I’ve never felt like I needed to thank someone more than Matt Haig right now.
Wholeheartedly recommend this book, but not lending it to a soul.
3. BECKY CANN reviews The Life Impossible
Everything I expect from Matt Haig. Fantastical storyline, life affirming, and hopeful characters. As cliché as it sounds- every time I read his books, my heart feels a tiny bit healed, and he makes me see the world in a more beautiful light.
4. NEIL CHALLIS reviews The Life Impossible
Thanks to Canongate for this early proof. I love reading Matt’s book except one.
This may be his best yet, it’s a little odd but after’Midnight Library ‘not so much. Centred on Ibiza, a retired Maths teacher Grace her old friend Cristina, the beauty of the island, extra terrestrial, goats, lizards and Christina’s family. I did say it was odd.
As its a proof that’s really all I can say.
I really liked this. May not be for everybody.
5. J.SCHORR reviews The Life Impossible
Another good book by this author.
I have read other books by this author and was eager to read it. I especially enjoyed The Midnight Library. The story began a bit slow, and it took me awhile to get into it. The main character Grace is on a journey of self-exploration and healing and finds herself immersed in an unfamiliar environment. It is a bit of a mystery for fans who like suspense. Overall, a good read, but not enjoyable as previous works by Matt Haig.
6. PKGURU reviews The Life Impossible
Storytelling as good a read as it gets
What a fun read! A beautifully composed tale of surprise and discovery and journey. As I was reading The Life Impossible, I kept going back to Carlos Ruiz Zafron’s Shadow in the Wind. Has a very similar vibe although entirely different. But if you love Shadow in the Wind as I do, you’ll love Matt Haig’s latest. I know a book is special when I hate to see it end. Such was the case with this lovely read.
7. RICHIE LAMOTHE reviews The Life Impossible
The real life acknowledged throught he supernatural.
Not a big fan of tales of the supernatural, but Matt Haig’s well-written and well-thought out book struck a chord with me. An easy read and very easy to follow, The Life Impossible melded the supernatural world with the real. Who among us has felt guilt, grief or regret at some point in our lives, yet persevered to continue on and lead a long and fuller life.
I was so impressed that I have just ordered Mr. Haig’s The Midnight Library – and I might even consider a visit to Ibiza some day!
8. TREVOR & TARA reviews The Life Impossible
Great novel
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is a moving exploration of the choices that shape our lives. Nora Seed, filled with regret, discovers a library where each book offers a glimpse into a different version of her life. Through these alternate realities, Haig masterfully shows how even the smallest decisions can have profound impacts.
The novel’s hopeful message about second chances and finding joy in the present moment is both comforting and thought-provoking. The Midnight Library is a beautifully written reminder to appreciate the life we have—a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered about the paths not taken.
9. TIERNEY MOORE reviews The Life Impossible
Another winner from Matt Haig! Mr. Haig again shows he is a master of employing a magical realism element and incorporating it into characters’ lives that feel fully three-dimensional and real. I right contradict myself a little here when I say that perhaps in our own “real” lives, we don’t usually live through huge arcs in relatively short periods of time. But I love it when characters do in fiction, and live an arc Grace does here! If you enjoy reading an MC’s journey in which their perceptions and understandings are fully challenged and their decisions and lives change greatly, then you’ll enjoy The Life Impossible; if you enjoyed The Midnight Library, you’re very likely to enjoy The Life Impossible. And there are echoes, too, of How to Stop Time in terms of loneliness and the MC’s willingness to embrace or change that.
MC Grace is an interesting choice. I loved that Grace could be, say, 30 or her 70+ as she is here. Grief, loneliness, and lack of direction are issues most of us have faced to whatever degrees at some time or other, making Grace as appealing and relatable no matter her stage of life. But if you’re a little older than your 30s (as I am!), you’ll relate to grace even more deeply, I’d say.
Not quite as strong as The Midnight Library or How to Stop Time, which, for me, are modern masterpieces (and it is thus unfair to judge this novel against them), The Life Impossible is, nonetheless, a 5-star read, for me. Its themes of environmentalism, history, and “the simple life” standing up to rampant capitalism are very on point and told well. Set Grace’s amazing journey among those, and The Life Impossible is hard to resist.
Thank you to NetGalley, to the author and publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.
10. NILTON TEIXEIRA reviews The Life Impossible
This was a quite an interesting book, with lots of quotations, books and music references.
I loved the references to great songs by great singers such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie or groups such as The Carpenters, Fleetwood Mac and The Cure (absolutely one of my favourite groups, who offered exquisite and fabulous underrated songs).
It’s a work of fiction involving magical realism, so I do suggest to read it with an open mind and heart. You may not agree with all of the author’s opinions, but they are valid.
It wasn’t completely flawless, but it was quite interesting, and I could feel that the author really put his heart into it.
The first 30% was really good but the author did loose some momentum, and the messages became a bit repetitive.
The part about protecting the ecology was a bit boring, but I respected his point of view
I can see some readers considering this work to be a bit preachy, but I can’t deny that its concept was very good.
This was my 4th book by Matt Haig, and to date my favourite work is still “The Humans”. I loved the concept of “The Midnight Library” and “How to Stop Time”, but neither did impress me like this one.
I thought that the writing, storytelling and execution were excellent, but I wasn’t emotionally connected, otherwise I would have rated it 5 stars.
e-book (Kobo): 336 pages (default), 95k words (lots of chapters – some was just a phrase or have two paragraphs).
III. The Life Impossible Quotes by Matt Haig
The best book quotes from The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
“I always think that the quickest way to understand someone is to look at what’s on their bookshelves. Especially if they are honest bookshelves, not the fancy ornamental kind. And there was nothing fancy or ornamental about this place.”
“All reading, in short, is telepathy and all reading is time travel. It connects us to everyone and everywhere and every time and every imagined dream.”
“People say that love is rare. I am not so sure. What is rare is something even more desirable. Understanding. There is no point in being loved if you are not understood. They are simply loving an idea of you they have in their mind. They are in love with love. They are in love with their loving. To be understood. And not only that, but to be understood and appreciated once understood. That is what matters.”
“when it feels like we are truly, deeply alone, that is the moment when we most need to do something in order to remember how we connect.”
“When you grieve someone you see their message in everything. Even in the sunlight on a blade of grass. The whole world becomes their translator.”
“I suppose that is one of the purposes of all reading. It helps you live lives beyond the one you are inside.”
“My simmering disquiet about my own existence had always found its focus in my physical form. I had spent a lifetime hating my appearance in the present and appreciating it in retrospect.”
“We are never at the finish line of understanding. There is always something about life and the universe that we are still to discover”
“Whatever is awaiting me is awaiting me. For now, let’s live.”
“I suppose that is one of the purposes of all reading. It helps you live lives beyond the one you are inside. It turns our single-room mental shack into a mansion.”
“The point of desperation is often the point of truth. When things are wrong, we need to reach rock bottom in order for change to happen. We sometimes need to feel trapped in order to find the way out. We don’t meet ourselves in the light and air. We don’t understand the radio when the song is playing. We sometimes need to smash the thing to see how it is made.”
“That is one great thing about having someone by your side. They are a shock absorber to the madness of experience.”
“Life sings and blazes. Even when we are numb to it, when we hide from it, when it is too loud and painful to experience, when we aren’t equipped to feel it – it is there, waiting, to be cherished and protected, ready to give us at least one more blast of beauty before the night.”
“The difference between a gift and a curse was sometimes just a question of perspective.”
“I had spent a lifetime hating my appearance in the present and then appreciating it in retrospect.”
“Eating watermelon in the sun was such a wonderful feeling I wondered why I hadn’t spent more of my life doing it. I wondered why it wasn’t everyone’s aspiration. I wondered why every successful businessperson on the planet continued to work and visit offices and stare at computers when they could just quit and eat watermelon in the sun for ever.”
“Maybe that’s the truly ridiculous thing, the way we don’t even blink at the sheer improbability of our lives here on this rock spinning through space. The way we exist out of nothing, the way the whole universe exists out of nothing, and here we are, the impossible something that made existence out of the void. Impossible life. A fluke to be cherished.”
“You really can go beyond infinity. Buzz Lightyear was the secret genius in Toy Story.”
“People you love deeply become elemental. To hear they won’t be there any more is like hearing the air or ocean won’t be. It feels like a fatal disruption to the universe.”
“People are like pieces of music. We don’t hear their songs because very few people play them out loud.”
“That’s the thing with grief. The way it kind of sinks you into death as well. I mean, you are still biologically functioning obviously. You are out there breathing and seeing and talking but you aren’t properly alive any more.”
“Joint pain was like grief. The more you thought about it, the more it hurt, but you couldn’t not think about it because it bloody hurt. Vicious circle.”
“But that is how we beat death. We beat death by living while we are here. Death may be infinite, but, as we know, infinity is a relative concept. We can create a bigger infinity out of life. By feeling. And every day I feel. I feel deeply and intensely and what I feel is gratitude.”
“I had thought, foolishly, that coming to Ibiza would shake things up, dust the cobwebs, reduce the mental weight. I thought, basically, what we all want to think when we step on a plane: that I was about to escape. But no. The trouble with having a change of scene is that if you get there and find that you feel just the same, then you really are trapped. And that was my conclusion.”
“Sometimes in order to be helpful we have to give up the desire to be liked.”
“This is the challenge of life, isn’t it? Moving forward without annihilating what has gone before. Knowing what to clasp onto and what to release without destroying yourself. Trying not to be the meteor and the dinosaur at once. There was also, in the front aisle nearest”
“There is always an unknown variable, and that unknown variable is often yourself. Embrace the mystery would be my advice. Embrace the impossibility of it all. Enjoy the not-knowing. Don’t rush to the wedding or the death or the amen.”
“There are two kinds of ghosts that torment you when a young person dies. The ghost of who they were, and the ghosts of who they could have been.”
“As you know, in conventional mathematics, there is a tendency to simplify. We formulate algorithms and patterns and formulas based on everything else staying fixed; a more intricate mathematics understands that, in an ever-changing universe, very little is fixed or simple.”
“People say that love is rare. I am not so sure. What is rare is something even more desirable. Understanding. There is no point in being loved if you are not understood.”
“I suppose describing it is like describing a difficult emotion, a contradictory emotion. You will get more of those as you get older. Like the strange small contentment that can sometimes be traced to grief or tears, living alongside the pain. Or the bittersweet knowledge that all things must pass.”
“There was a tranquillity that made me wish I’d been to church more in recent years. I think I had been playing hard to get. With God, I mean. I wanted Him to come to me. To prove He was there. But now I realised it doesn’t work like that. We make our own faith just as we make our own stories. We believe in what we want to believe, but it takes effort.”
Excerpted from The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
….
Note: Above are quotes and excerpts from the book “The Life Impossible by Matt Haig”. If you find it interesting and useful, don’t forget to buy paper books to support the Author and Publisher!
The above content has been collected from various sources on the internet. Click the Share button to recommend the book to your friends! |
BookQuote.Net Sincerely Introduced!