Behind the Story: The Life Impossible

Learn more about the background of our July Bookery Book Club pick, Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible

Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible is our July Bookery Book Club pick—and the focus of an upcoming episode of The Bookery Podcast releasing on July 24—so we wanted to know more about how the novel came to be.

The Life Impossible, which released earlier this year, tells the story of Grace Winter, a very depressed woman who is mired in grief after the years-ago loss of her young son and the more recent death of her husband. Out of the blue, an old friend, Christina, leaves Grace a home on the island of Ibiza, and Grace, in an entirely out-of-character move, decides to go. But on Ibiza, things that once seemed impossible become possible—and through some very other worldly experiences, Grace eventually deals with her grief and begins to truly live again. 

If you’ve read any of Matt Haig’s previous novels, you know mysterious and fantastic things are par for the course, but The Life Impossible delves very deeply into the realm of fantasy—which, to be honest, isn’t a genre we delve into much here at The Bookery. So, we went “behind the story” to learn more about where Matt Haig got the idea, what his writing process looks like and why he picked Ibiza as the setting. 

Where did the idea for The Life Impossible come from? 

In an interview with Audible, Haig said the overarching theme of The Life Impossible actually came from his own experience. As a young man, Haig experienced severe depression that teetered on the edge of suicidal. 

He wanted to write a novel that was, in a sense, an “ode to recovery” and helped others to recognize that what feels impossible—hope—is possible. “I think it's hard to convey the experience of feeling the impossible in your own life and putting it into fiction,” Haig said in the Audible interview. “When you do that, when you translate the sort of regenerative experience of recovery, I feel like the best way to do that is through a fable, is through a fantasy, through sort of science fiction, through magical happenings in the ocean, through potential extraterrestrial elements and all of that. Because when you go through certain experiences in life, you yourself feel like an alien. And when you achieve things which you didn't think you'd achieve, the whole world can feel more vivid and strange and weird. When I used to recover from depression, I'd noticed even the grass seemed greener, the sky seemed bluer, things tasted better.”

What does Haig’s writing process look like? 

When Haig appeared on the “Writer Routine” podcast a few years ago, he talked openly about his writing process, which doesn’t involve a lot of note-taking, plot planning or sketching out scenes and topics. “I tend to write a story by writing a story,” Haid said on the podcast. “I tend to get ideas by actually writing.” 

When talking with Katie O’Connell for the Audible interview, Haig described himself as an all-or-nothing or binge writer. “It will take me ages to develop the idea,” he said. “I'll be painstaking going through sentences at the start, and I'll write about two sentences a day. And then suddenly I'll turn a corner in the story, or I'll get something, and then it'll be like a rush to get it all down because I'm worried I'm going to lose it.” 

Unlike some writers, Haig doesn’t follow a daily routine or schedule. When he’s writing, that’s his focus. But he does tend to write in the morning or after a run or a trip to the gym. “physical health and mental health are the same thing,” he said. “So, if you are feeling really rundown or really hungover or really tired or sleep-deprived, you are not going to be on good physical form, and you're not going to be on mental form. Your brain's a physical thing. I often write after a run or after I've been to the gym or something. I tend to write a little bit better.” 

How did Haig pick the setting? 

Haig and his wife actually lived in Ibiza in the 1990s, which he described as “a party island” in an interview with CTV earlier this year. It was actually a very difficult time for Haig, who said he embraced the Ibiza lifestyle with abandon. “I had a job where I was selling tickets in a bar, so I was drinking from 11 in the morning for the rest of the day,” Haid commented in the Audible interview. “I had very low self-esteem at that point in life. I didn't have much to be proud of in my life.”

Haig has described The Life Impossible as his “least realistic” but his “most true” book, meaning that while the setting and events are a bit supernatural and fantastic, the emotions about “recovery, grief, and starting at any age, even when you think you can’t” (CTV) are something we can all relate to. 

We’ll be talking more about The Life Impossible on our July 24 Bookery Podcast episode. So listen up and let us know your thoughts on social media in the meantime! 

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