Book Review: "Midnight Library" by Matt Haig
“Midnight Library” by Matt Haig
Synopsis: Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
Rating: 4.5
Trigger warnings: suicide, attempted suicide
Review: I teased this in my “If You Only Read One” yesterday, but I adored this book — it was creative, it was thought-provoking, it was lyrical, and it was emotionally cathartic. Having a good memory can be both a blessing (great for work! I remember everything!) and a curse (terrible for emotions! I remember everything!), and as a result, I spend probably more time than I should reliving moments and wondering “what if” I had made a different choice — how would my life have turned out differently?
What if I hadn’t gone to college where I did — would I have ended up in law school? or DC? or New York? or would I still be in my hometown? What if I hadn’t replied to that message on Instagram? What if I hadn’t met an online friend in a bar that turned out to be one of my closest friends (hi, Shannon!)? What if I hadn’t moved to DC? What if I hadn’t reached out to Moira and Shannon about creating She’s Full of Lit last year after a friend suggested I might be good at the book blogging thing? And those are just the big choices — there are many tiny decisions that we make everyday that create a different timeline that could have been. So, when I saw Matt Haig, an author whose earlier work I have previously enjoyed, was tackling this in a book, I was thrilled and apprehensive because I didn’t know how he would articulate this in a personally satisfying way.
Well. I shouldn’t have worried at all. Nora Seed’s story was better than I expected. Nora, who has decidedly not lived up to her potential — at least in her own mind — and figures that no one in the world will miss her, so she decides she’s done. Instead of her life ending, she ends up in a Library, where she is handed her “Book of Regrets” and given the opportunity to see the lives that could have been.
Her journey through the big regrets - breaking off an engagement, quitting a passion project, not taking a big leap of faith on something - doesn’t fill her with happiness the way I expected it might. We all have those “sliding door” moments, and what Nora found out was that those weren’t the big decisions that made a difference. For me, that was almost heartening, as I’m afraid my book of regrets rivals hers in size. We, the reader, get to go through this journey with her, and we are in her head as a rock star, a famous athlete, a happy mom, a barkeep, and even more.
I’m not going to give everything away, but this book does have a happy ending — eventually, Nora is able to end her time in the Library and she ends up in a much happier place, alongside many of the characters that we have come to know and love throughout the course of the book.
I do want to caution that if you find suicide a trigger, this isn’t the book for you. While it ultimately ends on a hopeful note (you can find the right path and “come back to life”), I’m well aware that isn’t actual reality. It’s something that I thought about as I was reading it, and I would be remiss to not explicitly call it out.
TL;DR: There’s a reason this book is sold out virtually everywhere — it’s creative, it’s well-written, it’s thought-provoking, and it’s unlike anything else I can remember reading.
If You Liked This, Try These:
“The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V.E. Schwab (Bookshop | Kindle | Shannon’s Review)
“Maybe in Another Life” by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Bookshop | Kindle)
“Oona Out of Order” by Marguerita Montimore (Bookshop | Kindle | My Review)
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