The Life Impossible

Content Warning: This section discusses the deaths of loved ones and grief.

La Presencia is symbolic of spirituality. It appears in the form of a glowing blue orb that characters including Grace, Christina, and Alberto encounter when they go diving in the water near Es Vedrà. After these encounters, the characters experience an awakening. They start to see their worlds and themselves anew after La Presencia imbues them with clairvoyant and telekinetic powers. The novel uses this presence as a metaphor for spirituality and the ways that being immersed in nature can open the individual’s eyes to new truths: “The only thing you have to believe at this point,” Alberto explains to Grace after she sees La Presencia, “is that there is a possibility that we don’t know every single thing about life in the universe” (120). La Presencia grants the characters access to the mysteries of the natural world, human experience, and life itself.

The house in Ibiza is symbolic of friendship. Grace is confused when she first receives the lawyer’s letter informing her that her former colleague, Christina, left her Ibiza home to her. She can’t reconcile herself with the gift because she has never considered her and Christina friends.