Matt Haig's Novel "The Life Impossible"" Mirrors His Life with Depression

Matt Haig's latest novel, "The Life Impossible" is a sci-fi, environmental messaging story that is a guise for the author to exorcize his demons battling with depression. His non-fiction, "Reasons to Stay Alive," is a forthright, honest account of his dark days and pro-active steps he uses and suggests for others. In his charming novel, "Being Human," Haig uses an alien inhabiting a human. The alien's new experiences as a human delights him in simple pleasures to cherish which are overlooked and taken for granted. The use of an extra terrestrial is revisited by Haig in "Life" as an underwater energy source that bestows extra-sensory powers to someone deemed worthy of using its abilities for the benefit of mankind and who will  appreciate the boost to one's senses. This person is Grace, a retired teacher and widow. She and her husband suffered the loss of their adolescent son fatally struck while riding his bike. Grace harbors immense guilt blaming herself for permitting him to ride in the rain that day. Out-of-the-blue, Grace is bequeathed a home in Ibiza from a former acquaintance whom she hardly knew. With nothing tying her in the states, she views this unexpected inheritance as an adventure. but not a permanent move. Upon arriving, Grace is warned to avoid the local eccentric, Mauricio, the town's scuba instructor.  Despite the warnings she seeks him out and ventures on her first scuba-diving lesson. The last thing Grace recalls before waking in a hospital is a glowing light unfurling towards her. Mauricio is bedside and explains she aroused the alien who endowed her with supernatural abilities. He tells her, "The only thing I ask is that you leave a door open in your mind to possibility." However, sticking with the plot asks a lot. It becomes  water-logged in a far-fetched mystery and saturated in an addled, sappy mission to align locals in pushing  back against an evil developer to protect their natural habitats and indigenous animals. Grace's newfound heightened senses brings the world into a technicolor Neverland where she visits with her deceased son and husband and absolved of her guilt and remorse. Dispairingly, too much of the story gets shrouded in Grace's sorrows making the reader gasp for air. "I owed it to the world to feel awful, that had been my logic. And if I didn't owe it to the world, at the very least I owed it to my dead husband my dead child. I have believed that I was simply not meant to be happy."  Haig's mission in "The Life" veered from instilling an uplifting message. The novel is fathoms deep in depression. Grace realizes late in her wayward journey, "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," making this novel a struggle and impossible to appreciate.