The Life Impossible

“What I am about to tell you is a story even I find hard to believe. Please don’t feel any obligation to take my word for anything. But know that nothing in this is made up. I have never believed in magic, and I still don’t. But sometimes what looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet.”

Grace’s honest and open tone captures her authenticity. She’s responding to Maurice’s email in this passage and speaking directly to him. Her use of language establishes her overarching approach to storytelling and simultaneously introduces the stakes of her narrative.

“It wasn’t pleasant, but it was something. The truth was that I hadn’t really felt much for years. Just a vague lingering sadness. Anhedonia. Do you know that word? The inability to feel pleasure. An unfeeling. Well, that had been me for some time. I have known depression, and it wasn’t that. It didn’t have the intensity of depression. It was just a lack. I was just existing.”

Grace’s description of her emotional experience echoes Maurice’s description of his emotional experience in his original email. The parallels between the characters’ encounters with loss, grief, and guilt connect them. Furthermore, Grace is using an open, authentic voice in this passage and allowing Maurice to see her vulnerability.

“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. His death created a hole right through me that could never again be filled. For years getting through a day was an Olympic event. There was a continual sense of terror at the knowledge that life dared exist without him. It was hard not to be furious. Most of all with myself.”

Haig’s use of metaphor in this passage underscores the profundity of Grace’s grief over her son Daniel’s death. She describes his passing as a hole and her sorrow as a difficult physical feat. These comparisons reify her despair and capture how her grief continues to dictate her outlook on life.

“Now, I am no Georg Cantor. But I too have had my worldview flipped on its head recently, and have felt a need to tell someone about it. I too have seen things that challenge me to my core. You emailed at just the right moment, because I think my need to tell this story has coincided with your need for answers. So, the question is, are you ready for a new theory of infinity?”

Haig’s use of direct address and mathematical allusions develop Grace’s character’s background. Grace is a kind, empathetic person who also has a sense of humor. The opening line in this passage captures these facets of her personality. She is also a former math teacher; her references to the mathematician Georg Cantor and theories of infinity authenticate her academic background.

“And then an image of a vast plant. An underwater meadow of seagrass. In the clearest, cleanest water imaginable, with fractured sunlight breaking through the ocean and a school of small silver fish in the background. It was, quite possibly, the most beautiful photograph I had ever seen. A fleeting feeling came over me. Something different to the rising fear. Something alongside it. Wonder, I suppose. A magnetic, forceful kind.”

Haig’s use of descriptive language captures Grace’s emotional response to diving with Alberto Ribas for the first time. Using vocabulary like “vast,” “clearest,” “cleanest,” “fractured,” “silver,” “beautiful,” “fleeting,” “magnetic,” and “forceful” conveys the intensity of this experience and foreshadows her spiritual awakening in the subsequent chapters. This figurative language also illustrates how Grace’s encounters with the natural world are transforming her broader outlook on life.

“Happiness in June in Ibiza was as common as equations in algebra, but I couldn’t feel any of it. I was missing Karl. I was missing Daniel. I was missing who I had once been, decades before. The person Christina had known. The me who never wallowed. I wondered if that me was still there. I wondered if I would ever find her.”

Haig’s use of anaphora captures Grace’s emotional state. She repeats the clause “I was missing” three times. This repetition establishes an urgent, desperate narrative tone and shows the intensity of what she’s feeling and describing. This quote also foreshadows Grace’s coming spiritual awakening and The Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Happiness.

“He stood at the door. Turned with a smile. His teeth, even without the gap, would have been remarkable. Angled and spaced like uneven headstones. Was he a madman? Was he a murderer? Could a face tell you anything at all? Was it better to follow him, or to stay in a humid hut with no answers and an actual snake? I was thinking of every ominous thing I had heard about him, from Sabine and Rosella. And from the Guardia Civil officer whose words I clearly remembered.”

Grace uses fragmentation, questions, and descriptive language to convey her response to meeting Alberto. The simile that Grace uses to describe Alberto’s teeth demonstrates the uneasiness that she feels in his presence. Furthermore, the subsequent succession of questions that she asks herself about Alberto illustrates her fear and uncertainty in an unknown situation.

“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. The problem hadn’t been Lincoln, or the bungalow, or my situation. The problem was me. There was no escape from grief and loneliness. So long as I stayed in the same aging body with my same curdled memories, I was my own life sentence.”

Grace’s declarative tone in this passage conveys the fixedness of her beliefs about herself. She has convinced herself that she’s a bad person and, in turn, denied herself any chances at happiness. Her self-regard is also so crystallized because of her age: She believes that, as an elderly woman, her chances at growth are unlikely.

“Yes. That was it. It felt like looking at a feeling. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that is the only way I can explain it. Like somehow it was love or hope I was looking at. Or rather, an emotion we don’t have a word for but which we feel at a deep level, one we keep buried, but which connects us. I was looking at something outside myself, obviously, but also somehow inside myself.”

Haig’s use of italics and fragmentation captures the difficulty that Grace feels in describing her emotional response to La Presencia. Grace also uses metaphor and simile in this passage in an attempt to translate this ineffable experience to Maurice.

“And then I acknowledged a fact: that this was the first time I had enjoyed something—properly enjoyed something—in months. Years, even. Sure, I had been diverted by things—old films, World, crossword, online chess, puzzle books, the occasional documentary, and had certainly been distracting myself since arriving in Ibiza—but enjoyment was something else. My anhedonia appeared to be over, thanks to a single glass of orange juice.”

Grace’s experience drinking orange juice after seeing La Presencia highlights her newfound perspective on life. For the first time since Daniel’s death, she can delight in everyday experiences and find joy in the seemingly mundane aspects of life. This underscores her Journey From Grief to Healing.

“Everything can be beautiful with the right eyes and ears, Maurice. Every genre of music. Every sorrow and every pleasure. Every inhale and exhale. Every guitar solo. Every voice. Every plant beside the tarmac.”

Haig’s use of both anaphora and direct address creates a heartfelt, urgent, and insistent narrative tone. Grace uses Maurice’s name because she wants to get his attention as she tries to convey the significant revelations that she’s recently experienced in her life. The repetition of “every” further underscores her belief in the experience she’s describing.

“But more importantly, I felt their tragedy. These are creatures that don’t age. They could be immortal if we left them to it. They don’t weaken naturally. They’d had their infinity stolen, and no one wants their infinity stolen. They wanted to be free. And I wanted them to be free. I felt their yearning and their powerlessness. I felt it overwhelm me now and I was turning again, towards the restaurant.”

The way that Grace describes the lobsters in the tank at the restaurant reveals her connection with them. She identifies with the lobsters and, in turn, becomes desperate to save them. Her repetition of the “I felt” underscores her sudden empathy for wildlife and interest in protecting it.

“It seems to me that if you want truth, if you want to lead a full and aware life, you should head towards possibility, towards mystery and movement, towards travel or change, because when you find the universality with that, you find yourself. Your ever-moving self. You arrive in the act of leaving. Of staying open, always, to the possibility that the simple things we tell ourselves may all be wrong.”

The complexity of Grace’s syntax in this passage mirrors the complexity of her emotional experience. Since encountering La Presencia, she has learned how to open herself to the world’s mystery and beauty and begun to believe in her possibilities. Her sentences have an elliptical quality that highlights the intensity of this internal transformation.

“And I really want you to find my would-be killer. Not for me. I will be safe, I am sure of it. But for others. They are still out there. I want you to stop them, because others are in danger. But mostly, I brought you here to save not other people’s lives but your own. I want you to live, Grace. I want you to let go of your past and live. You need to do this. For the good of everything. Do you hear me? Goodbye, my friend.”

Christina van der Berg’s words to Grace in her video message compel Grace to change how she sees herself. Christina is directly addressing Grace in this moment and intimately engaging her. Her tone both echoes the tone that Grace uses in her correspondence with Maurice and challenges Grace to acknowledge her humanity. This video message also marks a turning point in Grace’s journey.

“You can’t stay still in a moving universe. Change had happened. The shelter of grief and self-pity had been lifted. I couldn’t protect myself by doing nothing. Protection is something we can only give, not something we can always receive. And I was going to do what I could to help what needed to be helped.”

Grace’s experiences at the airport compel her to embrace change. Her narrative tone and style in this passage differ from her tone and style in the preceding chapters. She is straddling competing notions about goodness and evil, stasis and change. Here, she illustrates her desire to embrace life despite all she’s lost.

“I entered his mind completely now. It was wide open. Like a meadow. I went to him, inside his mind, and I was with him, and we just stayed there and we didn’t have to say anything. We were just together. In a state of understanding. On the same frequency. It was lovely. We sipped orange juice together.”

The style and form of these sentences capture the profundity of Grace and Alberto’s connection. Each of these sentences appears as its own paragraph on the page. This formal choice slows the narrative pacing and conveys the significance of what Grace is feeling when Alberto opens his heart to her. She’s also using simple sentence structures, which enact the purity of the moment.

“I passed someone my exact age. A Spanish woman who was in a deep depression. Who wanted to be nothing. I thought of the days after Karl’s funeral, when all I wanted to do was not exist. I became fascinated with zero, as a concept and a number. The ancient Egyptians had a hieroglyphic symbol for zero. It was interchangeable with the one for beauty. That appealed to my state of mind at the time. Beauty was nothing. As soon as there was something there was trouble. And pain.”

Grace’s allusions to mathematics capture her reliance on logic to understand her world. She’s remembering how she used to see herself and her life and, thus, how this mode of thought limited her engagement with the world. While she still loves math, she’s also learned that math and logic can’t encapsulate every facet of human experience.

“I don’t know what it was that made the house feel homely. Nothing had really changed about it, except for the beautiful flower on the path obviously. There was still the claustrophobic hallway, the small living room, the old sofa and tattily bohemian throw. The rug still needed cleaning, the large fan in the living room was still visibly clogged with dust, and to my shame I hadn’t yet mopped the floor tiles. The piano near the window filled half the room. The old hi-fi and rows of records and cassettes had the feel of a museum piece. The air remained thick and humid and stiff. But it was different now. It felt, somehow, like a relief to be there.”

Haig’s use of descriptive language paints a vivid scene. Grace is describing the Ibiza house in detail as if she is entering the space for the first time. Her keen attention to her surroundings captures how her outlook has changed.

“I always knew, Grace. You told me everything. Even when you didn’t. But I am here to say I wasn’t perfect either. And I lived with my mistakes and forgave myself and you must too. You are needed. I love you, Grace. I always have and always will. Love doesn’t just disappear. It’s like light. It keeps traveling. But you need to move on. You don’t remember me. Your guilt always clouds your vision. To remember us, to remember the good, you have to let go, Grace. You have to live.”

Karl’s heartfelt words to Grace usher her out of grief and toward healing. Karl speaks to Grace in her dream as if they are together in person. His words capture the characters’ intimacy, make Grace feel safe and seen, and encourage her to grow and embrace life anew.

“Although it was indisputably hot, loud and congested—three things I traditionally wasn’t a fan of—I was really quite enjoying myself. My legs weren’t aching, my hips weren’t entirely stiff, and if my ears were ringing I wouldn’t have been able to hear them. And I was caught up in the collective energy that I almost forgot what I was there for.”

Grace’s description of her time at Amnesia contributes to the novel’s exploration of The Intersection of Aging and Self-Exploration. At the novel’s start, Grace is resistant to trying new things. In this scene, she finds herself delighting in an unfamiliar environment and experience. Suddenly, her age doesn’t matter, and she can discover new things about herself when she opens herself to the unknown.

“But I must be honest here. I was enjoying myself. And that was no small thing. Joy! Me. The person who had never even indulged in a lottery ticket. I know it is probably terrible of a former teacher to tell their former student about the joy of playing poker at five in the morning, but it wasn’t the gambling. It was the sense of doing something old widows aren’t supposed to do. It felt like Caesar coming back and crossing the Rubicon. The turn and the river. As though I had this night taken risks and left an old version of myself behind and expanded the territory of who I was. Sometimes the rules of who we are supposed to be need to be broken.”

Haig’s use of metaphor, italics, and punctuation in this passage demonstrates Grace’s joyful state of mind. At the novel’s start, Grace feels incapable of experiencing happiness or pleasure. While at the casino, Grace discovers otherwise. These stylistic choices, in turn, capture and convey her altered state of mind and heart.

“You use this power that the ocean gave you and you do terrible things with it. You choose the most controversial locations and the most sensitive habitats because it makes you feel in control. It makes you feel what you didn’t feel when your parents weren’t there to save you.”

Grace’s bold, confrontational tone captures her newfound courage. She doesn’t shy away from Art Butler at the casino when he attacks Marta. Instead, she addresses him directly. Doing so captures her newly fearless and empowered state of being.

“Without guilt and grief and pain to imprison me, I realized I was everywhere. I was we. I was the sum of infinities. I was in every mind. I was in every grain of sand. I was in every drop of water. The isolated fortress of me no longer existed. I was still me, but I was everyone else. The way a one is still an entity to itself yet there in every other number. I was wide, wide open.”

Haig’s use of anaphora, repetition, and descriptive detail underscores Grace’s transformative experience in Ibiza. She is describing how liberated she feels after healing from her sorrow. This healing process has inspired her connections with others and the natural world. Her narrative style captures the significant nature of this experience.