Why this book: Selected by my literature reading group – another winner by Patsy, who consistently convinces us to read wonderful books that we might not otherwise read.

Summary in 3 Sentences: A dowdy, sedentary, widowed retired math teacher gets a letter in the mail that a former colleague at the school where she taught had died and left her her house on the island of Ibiza in the Mediterranean.  Against her inclinations, she decides to travel to Ibiza to see what this is all about and to find out more about her colleague and how she died.  She reluctantly she gets involved in a series of mind- and reality- bending adventures that change her life, and challenge much of what she believed was true about herself, life, and reality.

My Impressions:  Really enjoyed this book.  The story is told in the first person by an older, rather conservative English middle class lady, telling a remarkable and life-altering story.  I listened to it and would recommend listening to the audible as an engaging way to “experience” this book.  The Audio book is read by an older English lady whose voice and tenor seem very authentic to the character she is representing. 

The story has a bit of a Carlos Castaneda flavor, a bit of Miss Marple from Agatha Christie, and even a bit of twilight zone.  The lead character is Grace Winters, a 72yr old widow, retired math teacher who was resigned to living out her life in a comfortable and stable groove, not particularly excited about, or looking forward to anything – in fact probably somewhat depressed.  Her only child – a son – was killed many years before when he was hit on a bicycle by a truck, and she blames herself for letting him ride in the rain.  And she continues to stew over that though it’s many decades ago.

The book is actually a retrospective.  It  begins with her receiving an email from a a young man – Morris, a former student – who feels that life has no more meaning, he’s a failure at everything and essentially is ready to give up.  The story in the book is a very long response to Morris’s cry-for-help email, Grace telling her young former student what had happened to her and how she got out of her funk.  In telling her story, she occasionally reminds us that it is a long response to Morris, but Morris is absent from the book except at the beginning and the end. 

Comfortable and complacent in retirement, she receives a letter that Christina – a colleague from many years ago, who she really had not known very well, had disappeared, and left Grace her house  in Ibiza, a well known tourist destination off the east coast of Spain.  Grace learns that no one knew what had happened to Christina.   Grace goes back and forth about whether to even go to Ibiza, but decides – why not, and finally does.   When she arrives in Ibiza and decides to look into what happened to Christina, that’s were things get interesting – then more interesting, and then even more interesting.

She meets the man who’d been Christina’s mentor, Alberto Ribas – a Don Juan- like (the Yaqui Indian in Castaneda’s books)  character who is a native of Ibiza. Alberto Ribas is as eccentric as Grace Winters is conventional.  Through his machinations, Grace has contact with some mysterious “presence” and through that contact becomes endowed with paranormal powers that she didn’t ask for or want.  She actually resents the complicatons these powers bring to her, but she is also intrigued.  Then here is where Grace becomes a bit of Miss Marple, using these new abilities and insights to try to put the pieces of the puzzle together about Christina’s disappearance, but she realizes something else is going on.

The book then becomes a combination of Grace’s, Alberto Ribas ‘s and a few others efforts, to solve a mystery, while Grace comes to terms with her new powers, which give her new insights as well as powers.   They  also give her some of the pleasures  and insights that many “normal people” seek through psychedelics, or other mind altering substances, or by going to India to meditate for months or years.  None of what she has acquired is unknown to us in some circles – clairvoyance, mental telepathy and a sixth sense.  And an appreciation for the simple joys and beauty of life. 

In Grace’s telling of her story, I enjoyed her regular return to her roots as a mathematician and pointing to how her experiences fit with the rules of math and her insights from a lifetime of working in that realm.

At the end of the book we return to Morris whose email inspired Grace to tell him (us) her story.  And we and he are left with the wisdom she has learned through her extraordinary experiences.  Great fun, if you’ll let yourself suspend disbelief and go with it.

And it is indeed worth asking ourselves –  is it SO unlikely that some people have been gifted extraordinary insights and powers by unsown beings from another galaxy or dimension?  It seems the lid has come off  of publicly sharing experiences that people and organizations have had with UFOs – who knows what to believe anymore….

One thing that occurred to me later – that Grace’s story fits the trajectory of the Hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell described as a universal.  That journey goes more or less as follows;  A person chooses to step out of his/her comfort zone, goes through a struggle in which their old identity and values are  challenged, then the person is transformed into someone stronger, wiser, more powerful through their struggle, and then finally uses that new strength, power, and wisdom to transform and help others.  The interesting thing about this book is that our hero is a dowdy middle aged retired woman math teacher!