The Midnight Library
by Matt Haig
Trigger warning for this book: themes of suicide
Someone who knew me well once told me, “You will be able to achieve anything that you set your mind to. Your biggest challenge will be deciding what you want.” And I agreed. I know how to work hard and believe that I can be anything, do anything. My problem has always been wanting to do everything. I have nostalgia for all the different paths I might have ventured down and still could. Wouldn’t it be fun to be a biologist? Expert at a zoo? Live in Germany? Develop the next Neopets? There are so many ways to live, and knowing the joy I have in this life, I am deeply grateful for the path I have taken. The Midnight Library is about someone who also sees the different choices she might have made, but her perspective is negative. She sees regret, failure, and proof that the wonders of life are inaccessible to her.
So after a string of defeating life events, Nora Reed decides to end her life.
Nora awakens in library, greeted by an old friend, Mrs. Elm, her old school librarian. Except this Mrs. Elm is not the real one, and this is no ordinary library. Nora is in an in-between place. She is on the cusp of death, but for as long as the library clock stays in statis at midnight, Nora has a chance for a new life. Every book in the Midnight Library is a door to an alternate version of her life where she made different choices. With Mrs. Elm’s guidance, Nora uses her regrets to find out what would have happened if she didn’t break up with her fiancé, stayed in her brother’s band, swam her way to the Olympics, became a glaciologist, or made choices that never even considered.
It’s tempting to wonder how life might have turned out differently or similarly based on our choices, and I appreciated Matt Haig’s take on this subject, but I must admit, this book was awfully preachy. Nora learns about herself and how regrets aren’t worth ruminating on, but in doing so she turns to whoever is nearest to and monologues about life, choices, and regret. No matter how inappropriate or out of context it is. There are multiple passages that sound like the narration at the end of a children’s tv show that explains the moral lesson of the episode. I liked the story well enough, but the didactic nature of the book was too heavy handed for my taste.
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