The Life Impossible

I tried to read Matt Haig's earlier best seller, The Midnight Library, and, in spite of rave reviews, just could not get engaged. This book also caused me to struggle through the first few chapters before I became more engrossed with the characters and the plotting. The New York Times called this book "a love letter filled with magic."  Protagonist Grace is a retired mathematics teacher who describes herself in the book as “Don Quixote dressed in Marks & Spencer.” The Times provides this summary:

"Grace is grappling with loss. She’s a recent-ish widow, and she’s also still grieving the death of her son, Daniel, who died three decades prior, when he was just 9 years old. Since losing her immediate family, her life has shrunk so drastically that “she only had two contacts on her WhatsApp — Angela from the British Heart Foundation and Sophie, her sister-in-law, who had moved to Perth in Australia 33 years ago.” This might have been maudlin, but Haig lightens the mood, including with cheeky chapter titles (Grace’s initial tale of woe arrives under the heading “Sob Story”).The novel opens with a cry-for-help email from one of Grace’s former students, Maurice Augustine, who is despairing that “everything feels impossible.” The book we hold is Grace’s sprawling response. To comfort Maurice, she shares her own story about “a person who felt there was no point left in her existence, and then found the greatest purpose she had ever known.”Her tale is set in motion by “an act of kindness long ago”: In 1979, Grace invited Christina Papadakis, a colleague she barely knew, to spend Christmas Day with her. When Christina vanishes and is presumed dead in Ibiza decades later, she leaves Grace, of all people, her shabby house and a trail of clues about her fate. Officially, Christina “died at sea” — or did she?Cracking the case of Christina’s disappearance forces Grace, who self-soothes with tedious mental equations and thoughts on theorems, to open her logical mind to the paranormal. “The only thing you have to believe at this point is that there is a possibility that we don’t know every single thing about life in the universe,” Grace writes to Maurice. “Is that possible?” In attempting to convince Grace, Haig moved even this skeptical reader to consider that science and magic aren’t mutually exclusive.Grace’s search for answers is filled with adventure (including a midnight scuba dive and a 2 a.m. club jaunt), comedy (via an enigmatic seaman named Alberto Ribas whose “general aesthetic seemed to be halfway between unrehabilitated caveman and pirate”) and vivid bursts of magical realism."

Kirkus concludes their review by saying "...the author’s insistence on the power of connection to change lives comes through loud and clear. Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy." Publishers Weekly gushes that the novel is "magnificent" and closes "In Haig’s sure hands, magic comes to breathtaking life."

The Last Equation of Isaac Severy: A Novel in Clues

Nova Jacobs inaugural novel does indeed lead the protagonist and the reader on a merry chase trying to figure out where the elusive equation is. Nobody is quite who they seem to be, or at the very least, they are keeping significant secrets from those closest to them. The Severy family is initially brought together in this story when Isaac Severy, a brilliant mathematician and world expert in chaos theory, apparently kills himself. Although we know from the Prologue that this isn't true, the rest of the family is devastated because no one had any sense that he was despondent or at risk of suicide. Our protagonist, Hazel Severy, the owner of a financially failing bookstore in downtown Seattle, has come to Los Angeles where the rest of the Severy family --or at least those she knows about--have always lived. Hazel and her brother, Gregory, an LAPD detective, were actually the abused foster children of Isaac Severy's son, Tom. When Tom was arrested for the death of his wife, Isaac officially adopted the two children and they lived with him and his wife Lily as their grandchildren. All of the Severy children are brilliant but not equally successful. Tom, the abusive foster parent, succumbed to drug addiction and is ostensibly in prison for life; Philip, like his father, is a noted mathematician at Cal Tech but feels he has stagnated in recent years; and their sister, Paige, has been working forever on a book that will never be finished. They all suffer from migraines, although Tom is more severely affected than the others. As the story proceeds we learn about the horrendous abuse visited on Hazel and especially on Gregory.
A few days after Isaac's death, Hazel receives a letter telling her that she is to destroy all of his work in room 137, and to turn over his final equation to only one person, a mathematician named Respanti who likes herringbone. Isaac also tells Hazel that his death was not a suicide and that she must leave his house no later than Oct .31, for there will be two more deaths. She must tell no one of the contents of his letter. Finally, Isaac's letter to Hazel says that the equation has been left with the person that people will least suspect; Hazel assumes this means her since she is not a mathematician. The long and short of this intricate plot is that Isaac has created a formula that can predict death--not accidental death, but homicides and suicides. When Hazel eventually finds room 137, she discovers a map of greater Los Angeles marked with red dots bearing the exact dates and times of deaths that will occur. Some of these are now past, but some lie in the future, creating additional pressure to solve this puzzle. One of Hazel's cousins, Philip's married daughter Sybil, dies from a fall down steep canyon stairs within a few days of Isaac. A mysterious person named P. Booth Lyon is stalking both Hazel and Philip, trying to find Isaac's legacy in order to profit from it. When Hazel turns to her cousin Alex, Paige's estranged son, to help solve the mystery, he betrays her. Raspanti arrives from Italy, tracks down Hazel and learns of the theft of Isaac's computer and the map; he berates Hazel for allowing Isaac's work to fall into the wrong hands. Can Hazel repair the damage no only from this error in judgment but also from the decisions she has made in other parts of her life? I've really only scratched the surface of the plot and characters. Highly recommended. Reviews from The Washington Post, Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly.