Hang onto every day as precious – that’s the theme of both The Life Impossible by Matt Haig and Sandwich by Catherine Newman. Both writers point out that each of us, at this moment, is both the oldest and youngest we’ll ever be. “If only we could always have the perspective of the future with us as we live that present,” one protagonist notes. Attitudes on age can be adjusted with new experiences.
Both novels address aging and struggling with painful memories and regrets. In both, the protagonist has traveled to a vacation community – an inherited and modest Ibiza home in the first and a rented cottage on Cape Cod in the second. Secrets and new aspirations spill from the female protagonists. Both books engage the reader from the start, Sandwich with slapstick humor and Impossible Life with intrigue.
In Sandwich Rocky spends the week at the rickety Cape rental cabin with her husband, adult children who also welcome her elderly parents for two days. Rocky is gregarious, fun, and a tad narcissistic and frequently toys with the notion of seeking divorce from her generally capable husband who prides himself on not apologizing and manages to “look away from anything you don’t want to see.” The two argue often and playfully, and Rocky limits the secrets she shares with him.
The boisterous family, constantly bantering, attract attention wherever they go – the beach, shops, or restaurants. The son’s girlfriend compares her large family with Rocky’s, describing them as fun and chaotic, but not “so … intentional the way you guys always seem.”
Rocky cherishes the memories triggered by the annual stays at the cottage and enjoys hearing her children complain about the conveniences and décor. “People insist you should be grateful instead of complaining? They maybe don’t understand how much gratitude one might feel about the opportunity to complain.”
The Life Impossible is a darker book about a woman who mulls over regrets from years before. “The trouble with tragedy is that it tars everything that comes after,” observes Grace Winters, a retired math teacher, in her seventies, for whom the “unknown variable must always be found.” She finds a theme in all she meets and identifies her own theme as guilt. She finds comfort in blaming herself for the death of a young son followed by an affair and cheating on a beloved husband: “Grief felt like the only way to keep close to them” and she sees “everyone on Earth as someone’s grief waiting to happen.”
First, Grace receives a distressing note from a former student about his own hardships, and the rest of the book follows as her response, self-analysis that she hopes will be useful. Maurice does not appear in the novel other than sending another note, and Grace strives to be both blunt and kind. “Sometimes in order to be helpful we have to give up the desire to be liked.” She recalls Maurice, especially his propensity to say sorry for things he had not done. “It is like an admission that everyone in the world is a little to blame for everything.”
She becomes more accepting of her past, explaining that “one good thing about having regrets is that I no longer judge others too harshly.” And she warns him against “incredibly common” worry: “Along with loneliness it is the polluted air that most minds live in, the ting that deprives us of the present moment, trapping us in the past and future all at once.”
Grace also receives notice from a law firm. An acquaintance from the start of both their teaching careers bequeathed Grace a small home on a busy roadway in Ibiza. Grace knew Christine briefly, opening her home one lonely Christmas night and encouraging the woman to pursue a singing career,
With few friends or activities, Grace takes off for Ibiza to inspect the home. The change in scene initially does not help. “The problem was me. There was no escape from grief and loneliness. So long as I stayed in the same ageing body with my same curdled memories, I was my own life sentence.”
Suspecting foul play, Grace moves out of her comfort zone making inquiries of the woman’s friends. The book takes odd turns into fantasy and telepathy and mind control, and Grace increasingly discovers she enjoys new people and experiences, moving beyond old ruts and choices. She seeks understanding rather than love. “There is no point in being loved if you are not understood. They are simply loving an idea of you they have in their mind. They are in love with love.”
Recalling the relationship with her husband, she finds she is less resistant to close relationships and appreciates someone by her side who can be “a shock absorber to the madness of experience.”
In both books, the protagonists assume that their own experiences will guide others, and other characters ensure that the self-absorption does not go too far. Abrupt withdrawal from old regrets and everyday problems, along with the release of secrets, can offer survival mechanisms.
