TL;DR: A simple story about life, loss, love, and potential, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is a beautiful story that reminded me what life was really all about.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Nora is depressed and feels as if she is loved by no one and loves no one, so she decides to die. When she wakes up, she’s in a library of infinite life possibilities, each one a different branch of her life where she made different choices. It’s a story about her journey and the lessons she learns along the way.
This book came into my life in one of those perfect moments, where I had a thought but hadn’t consciously chosen to use it. I’d been hovering around the edges of the idea and the book put it into sharp focus. I finished it and felt alive and magical and wondrous about the choices we make and the perceptions we hold about every experience we have. Maybe if I hadn’t read it in this moment, I’d feel differently. But because I have, I rate it 5 stars.
The Plot
Depression rules Nora. Her cat dies, she loses her job, she runs into an old friend of her brother’s who is angry at a choice she made twenty years before. She regrets a lot about her life and feels as if there’s no hope left.
So she goes home and decides to die. When she comes to, she’s in a library of infinite books, every single one of them a potential reality she could have lived. And so begins her journey into what her life could’ve been like if she made different choices, followed different paths, and loved less or more.
But she doesn’t have infinite time to explore all those lives and now she needs to decide. Will it be the right one? Will she find the life she wants to live more than any other?
What I liked & liked less
I loved this book. It came at just the right moment for me and the message it carries spoke volumes to me.
I liked the idea of it, that every decision we make takes us on another path to another decision and another. That we could have been anything if we’d simply chosen differently.
I also liked the journey Nora is on. She learns lessons in each life, some small, some large, but they add up to the final one she choses. She also is flawed and scared. She thinks one thing would make her happy, but finds out it isn’t the job or the money or the fame that can do that for her, but something else entirely.
I liked the library and the discussions she has with the librarian, her old school librarian, Mrs. Elm. I love it started with The Book of Regrets and that her regrets overwhelmed her. I also liked that somewhere along the way she got “lost in her lostness.”
What didn’t I like? I might have wanted a bit more character growth, a bit more depth to the story, but then it wouldn’t have been such an easy read. And I wonder if it really is that simple, to choose differently, to see the world differently.
Maybe it is. I’ll have to see.
To Sum Up (Too Late!)
I loved this book and the message it brings. I love the world building, the different lives she lived and the lessons she took from them. I liked the idea of an infinite library and how much philosophy plays a part in how Nora navigates the world. I’m not a huge philosophy person, but it worked in this book. And I can’t wait to see how my life turns out now that I’ve read it. For that and more, I give it 5 stars.
About the Author(s)
Matt Haig was born in Sheffield, England. He writes books for both adults and children, often blending the worlds of domestic reality and outright fantasy, with a quirky twist.
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Originally published on Feedium.