The Life Impossible
Grace Winters is seventy-two, a retired maths teacher living a quiet, grief-narrowed life in Lincolnshire after losing her husband and, years before that, her young son. When she learns that a former colleague, Christina van der Berg, has died on the Spanish island of Ibiza and left her a house there, Grace has little reason to stay behind, and travels out to settle the estate. What she finds is stranger than she expected: a mystery around Christina's death, and a force in the sea and land that begins to change how Grace sees the world, and herself. Written as a series of emails to her former student Maurice Augustine, Grace's account traces a late-life awakening — one that puts her at odds with a property developer intent on remaking the island for profit. From the author of The Midnight Library, this is a novel about grief, wonder, and the possibility of change at any age.
A retired math teacher in her seventies who has lost a husband, daughter, and son in quick succession; the novel follows her through grief toward an unexpected transformation.
A real estate developer whose plans to commercialise Ibiza threaten the island Grace has come to protect.
Grace's deceased former colleague, whose death on Ibiza and bequest of her house there sets the novel in motion.
Grace's former student, struggling with his own despair; the novel is framed as the emails Grace writes to him.