Before we start, this episode contains some chat that you might find difficult to listen to,

so do check the show notes for more details.

Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place, the show that encourages your imagination to thrive.

Today I'm catching up with Matt Haig.

Happiness only means happiness because sadness exists, unlike you only see stars in the sky because the dark

exists that can see the stars and I think that is what life is like and one of the

advantages of getting older is you've known enough bad times or you've lost enough people to actually truly appreciate in a way you can't necessarily in your early 20s, appreciate those good days and

those good people around you.

Matt is the most fantastic author, he's written non-fiction and fiction I think you'll have

been hard-pressed to miss the midnight library in the last few years what a book I

bloody love that book his His latest novel is called The Life Impossible

and we'll talk about some of the clever themes and beautiful lines in this chat

because Matt has such an amazing way of succinctly summing up what it is to be human in his

writing. It's not an easy thing to do but he has got one hell of a knack for it.

Matt came on the show right back at the beginning, like six and a half years ago.

It's absolutely mad.

So it was gorgeous to catch up with him and how he's been doing over the years.

I think one thing, having read the life impossible that I was really intrigued to find out about

was his relationship with the island Ibaeta because when we talked six and a half years ago

he didn't really talk about I betha. It seemed like a sensitive

subject because he'd had an incredibly tricky time there back in his early 20s. But his new book, The Life

Impossible, is set in Iba either. So I really want to hear about how he's got to the

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