I love Matt Haig’s books so I was super excited for this to come out – I find with new books like this it’s actually cheaper to use my audible credit and get it as an audiobook than to buy a new kindle book, but in this case I loved the audible narrations so that’s no problem. Joanna Lumley really brought to life the main character, a widowed retired teacher in her early seventies who was existing rather than living until she inherited a house in Spain and went on an adventure. I often complain about ‘posh’ narrators, and Joanna Lumley is as posh as they come, but so good that I not only overlooked the ‘poshness’ but felt it was entirely apt in this case.
Like most Matt Haig books, this one is ultimately uplifting, but doesn’t shy away from real deep emotional issues, and personally, while I was listening to this book I was going through a sad time with my beloved pet dog – in the space of less than a month he went from healthy to blind, to cancer diagnosis, to dementia and then his death. I was heartbroken, I know he was just a dog, but I loved that wee mutt. So listening to a very emotional book that deals with love and loss among other things left me wailing out loud several times.
I loved that the main character, Grace Winters, was an older woman – I’m only 55 but I have poor hearing and quite bad inflammatory arthritis so I often feel that I’m over the hill and in-valid (my ‘jokey’ way of pronouncing invalid to show that I sometimes feel that my disabilities make me worthless – don’t worry, I’m not properly depressed, just a bit sorry for myself!), and that she had purpose and found joy when she had thought that those things were behind her.
There is magical realism – in the form of an under the sea organism of extra-terrestrial origin that can gift certain powers to people who swim/dive near it and whom it deems worthy or important. Grace is given an array of gifts including a deep kind of telepathy that not only hears the thoughts of other people, but knows them at a deep level and this leads to lots of philosophical talk of empathy and complexity of people and their motivations and basically being kinder and more understanding.
There is a ‘baddie’ and there is peril and excitement, which was okay, but for me I kind of liked the emotional relationship stuff better. Really good book over all though.
Sarah Wray Writer 