Review: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Title: The Midnight Library
Author: Matt Haig
First Publication Date: August 13, 2020
Genre: Contemporary, Magical Realism
Rating: ☕☕☕☕ (4/5)
Content Warnings: highlight to view {suicide, death, death of a pet, drug addiction, depression}

BLURB

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? A novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived.
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?
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. (via Goodreads)

THOUGHTS

The only way to learn is to live.

Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library follows a 32-year old unhappy Nora Seed who felt that she is caught at the dead-end of her life. After a night of consecutive events that lead to her feeling that she is unable to continue living this existence, she decided to commit suicide. Instead of dying, she ended up stuck in the in-between: fashioned into a library perpetually stuck at midnight, overseen by her grade school librarian. Here, she was given a chance to live out alternate lives, working on regrets she racked up through the years. In true Matt Haig fashion, this book offered up a lot of life lessons and nuggets of wisdom that will stick to most readers’ hearts – as it stuck to mine.

Sure it’s predictable (most of the plot is already in the blurb anyway) and I know that the concept is a little bit overdone these days, but it’s worth it to be able to read and be reminded of the sentiment. That there is always gonna be a choice, an alternative. You just have to consciously make that decision day by day.

I’ve read a couple of reviews saying how it’s messed up that the Nora only thought she found happiness and contentment in a universe/life where she is married and has a kid. That glorification of this ‘complete’ life is maybe borne out of the cliché idea of what supposedly completes a woman and maybe because the author is a man. Lord knows it’s the same topic we’ve debated and fought for over and over. But I also think that, if looked at in another perspective, it’s the first universe she felt safe and loved and was able to love and protect something – that there’s an explicit manifestation of that feeling and purpose – and I think that counts for something. I kept thinking that maybe the reason why it is an enduring popular concept (i.e., feeling complete if you have family and kids) was because it is one of the easiest ways to actually recognize and count your blessings in life: because it’s there, it’s tangible. It’s the same thing that it is easier to find happiness and feel that rush when you are in a relationship or if you are dating. But at the end of the day, feeling contentment that is dependent on these circumstances is not sustainable – as is shown in this book and depicted in Nora’s choices. But I still can’t deny the fact that it helps.

“There was a net of love to break her fall.”

This line is probably the best thing I will take with me from this book. That love: of others, from others, for yourself, will serve as a cushion when things fall hard – so you must invest in it. Too trite and obvious but too beautiful, still. For some weird reason, it reminded me of my feelings when I read Mitch Albom’s Tuesday’s with Morrie. I was definitely left with a lot of lessons to sustain me. If I was in a completely different state of mind, this may probably be my Anxious People – a book that could’ve really changed my life. Happiness, living a life, loving and being loved, contentment – everything in between – it’s all a matter of perspective at the end of the day. It’s choosing to believe in and feel all these good things that make life worthwhile.

Overall

“Maybe that’s what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself.”

To say that The Midnight Library has been just lovely is an understatement. It’s hard to trust popular books on Instagram lately but I think it is hyped up for a reason. I feel like how one would perceive and like this book depends on what is the reader’s state of mind or where they in life they moment they read it. It definitely has the potential to change and save lives. I’ve always believed some people find specific books at the right time. I hope a lot of people do find this book. ☆～

RATING

QUOTABLE QUOTES

“Never underestimate the big importance of small things”

“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do the people we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.
We can’t tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”

“It was interesting, she mused to herself, how life sometimes simply gave you a whole new perspective by waiting around long enough for you to see it.”

Want,’ she told her, in a measured tone, ‘is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely.

It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective.

* Honestly, I feel like the whole thing demands to be underlined and highlighted. This is that kind of book. Read here for some of the best lines in this book.

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About the Author

Matt Haig is an author for children and adults. His memoir Reasons to Stay Alive was a number one bestseller, staying in the British top ten for 46 weeks. His children’s book A Boy Called Christmas was a runaway hit and is translated in over 40 languages. It is being made into a film starring Maggie Smith, Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent and The Guardian called it an ‘instant classic’. His novels for adults include  the award-winning How To Stop Time, The Radleys, The Humans and the number one bestseller The Midnight Library.

He has sold over three million books worldwide.

Author Website | Twitter | Instagram

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