Patterns are a part of life, and the human mind is excellent at seeking them out. In fact, humans are so good at imposing order on seeming chaos that we invent it where sense cannot be found. Why? Because patterns are comforting. Patterns make it seem like there is a purpose to everything, a purpose to our suffering. For some reason, it’s easier to bear a burden if we know there’s a reason for it.

But patterns can also become cages of comfort. We know how to exist within a pattern, even if that pattern is one of grief. In Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible, Grace Winters, a retired math teacher, lives in a pattern dominated by the grief of losing her son, and her days are spent in the shadows of past mistakes. Grace is a retiree with varicose veins, guilt, and shame. She lives a comfortable life, but it is defined by her anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure. When an old acquaintance leaves her a house on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, however, the caged comfort of Grace’s life will be forever changed.

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig follows Grace’s journey from England to Ibiza to understanding. On the island, Grace learns that her friend disappeared during a diving accident. Was it murder? What happened to her friend? And why did she leave Grace a house? In the course of her quest for knowledge, she visits the entirety of the island, from churches to resorts, casinos and dance clubs to local spots. She meets the wild Alberto Ribas, once a famed biologist who was ridiculed out of the scientific field for his eccentric beliefs. Alberto now runs a scuba diving shop and was close friends with Grace’s co-worker. In fact, it was Alberto’s boat from which the woman disappeared.

But all this is only the surface of what’s going on. Underneath the waves between Ibiza and the nature preserve of Es Vedrà, lies La Presencia, or The Presence. This floating ball of light brings magic into Grace’s formerly logical life. Soon, Grace begins to experience life again. She begins to shed the anhedonia and to take pleasure in all the joys of life—small and large. La Presencia also healed her, and after her encounter with it, Grace notices that she can read minds. But she and Alberto also learn that a rich developer is seeking to destroy the wildlife sanctuary and turn the ocean above La Presencia into a highly traveled shipping route. In order to learn what happened to her friend and protect La Presencia, Grace must break the pattern of her former life. But the patterned comfort of guilt, grief, and shame aren’t easily shed.

The Life Impossible is a wonderful, hope-filled book. At its heart is a message that new beginnings are possible no matter what age we are. For Haig, change is never easy, but change also brings new joys to our lives. Grace is a fascinating character who is observant and thinks deeply about subjects. She also dwells in the past and weighs herself down with shame. I connected with her instantly. Her voice is as important to the story as the plot itself. All this made the book a refreshing departure from my usual grimdark-heavy reading list: it is light and hopeful but not shallow. Sprinkled throughout the text, philosophy and mathematical concepts enrich Grace’s story. Haig even finds a wonderful way to incorporate Set Theory from math into the narrative through the use of Hilbert’s Hotel. In this way, Haig reminds us, through Grace, to read widely and outside our comfort zone.

In particular, she reflects on grief in refreshing ways throughout the book—for example, she delves into how having a partner affects times of suffering. Throughout, Haig has plenty of memorable sentences that are worth quoting, and I underlined many, many times in this book: “When you grieve someone,” we read at one point as an example, “you see their message in everything.” Occasionally, though, the book does dip into saccharine territory. How much will depend upon reader’s tastes, of course, but I found some moments in the book too sweet, too cutesy. For instance, “[e]verything can be beautiful with the right eyes and ears.” That said, I have to wonder if that is a symptom of my own cynicism and the hardening of my own heart: these moments didn’t feel forced, and they were few and fleeting. But they did feel as if the joy or caring they conveyed was more fitting for the book than for the character.

This sense of confection can sometimes give the novel a superficial air. Some of the deep thoughts in the book really can seem shallow, or merely restatements of existing self-help triteness—for example, “Sometimes in order to be helpful we have to give up the desire to be liked.” This is true, too, for its treatment of genre: one could call this book Fantasy Lite. While The Life Impossible does borrow tropes and set dressings from fantasy, it fits the pattern of literary fiction far more than it does SFF. Yet, again in fairness, plot and fantasy conventions aren’t the primary concern of the book, and not every attempt to communicate profundity can be a success. Ultimately, the novel’s successes far outshine its failures: I underlined plenty of its sentences because, in the moment, they felt like revelations for and from Grace.

In other words, Grace is a character whose story is worth reading. And, in an additional departure from most fantasy books, the chapters that tell it are short. There is seemingly no pattern to the chapter lengths, with some being only a page or two and one offering no words outside the chapter title. This short chapter length creates a lot of momentum, and I’d find myself lost in the story. Often, I had to slow myself down in order to underline, take notes, and reflect on what I was reading. This was a book where I wondered what might come next from Grace’s reflections. Ultimately, it brought pleasure to my life to read about a retired math teacher, a widow, a grieving mother, who is able to find a new beginning.

In the end, reading The Life Impossible made me happy. It made me think. Grace was a compelling character who I couldn’t help but root for. Matt Haig has written a reflective, thoughtful book that is full of hope and joy. It’s a reminder to break free of the patterns of our life. How can I not love a book like that?