The Midnight Library - Matt Haig (Review & Summary)

Date of Reading: 14/1/2021

Author: Matt Haig

Publisher: Viking

Publication Date: September 29, 2020

Rating: 4/5

About the book:

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.

Review:

    This is not my first Matt Haig book. Though I can't say I love his works, he is not really on the hate zone either. And with all the hype surrounding it, how can I not select this one? Did I love it? Hmm . . . sort of, I guess.

    If you are into Paulo Coelho, then you will definitely love this book. There is a whole lot of philosophical stuff (in layman's terms) to wrap your head around, but many can identify with the story. After all, is there anyone without regrets, wishing for the road not taken? Some may dwell their remaining lives on it and Nora Seed apparently, is one of them. 

    She is constantly haunted by the failures of others which they attribute to her poor choices. Now finally she gets an opportunity to try out all of her options and learn from them. But is there really a perfect life where you can satisfy everyone? I think you know the answer, my fellow bookworms, even if you haven't read this story. Well, the book really puts it in an elegant way.

Summary:

    Twenty-seven hours before she decides to die, Nora Seed finds her cat dead on the road. The next day she loses her job as a salesperson in String Theory, a musical instruments store. With this comes the realisation that no one needs her anymore. She was good at swimming in school but didn't pursue it further for the great disappointment of her father. She joined her brother's band and wrote songs for them but the frequent panic attacks made her drop out of it. Her brother and his friend Ravi still blame her for the band's failure. Even her old neighbour doesn't need her anymore to bring his medicines. So she decides to die.

    But it looks like she cannot even do that properly. Instead of dying, she reaches the midnight library, a place between life and death. Someone who looks exactly like Mrs. Elm, her old school librarian is in charge here. The library, as she explains, offers Nora an opportunity to live the lives she might have lived with different choices in her root life. If she finds one life agreeable, she can choose to live as the Nora there or she can return to try another one.

Source: https://www.concrete-online.co.uk

    Her Book of Regrets is heavy since there are so many decisions that she regretted later on her life. She tried to undo it one by one. In one life she has married her ex-boyfriend and in others, she is an Olympics winner (in swimming), a famous musician, winemaker, animal shelter employee etc. When she takes the life of a glaciologist, she meets Hugo, who is also sliding through lives like her. In his case, it was a video store instead of a library. He has lived so many lives but cannot find happiness in any.

    Nora also plans to live sliding through the indefinite lives available to her. But when she chooses the life where she lives with Ash, the doctor with whom she should have gone for a coffee date, she finds herself liking it. But there are other things that have changed. People she used to lend a hand in her root suffers from the lack of her care. Still she tries to remain there, but in spite of all her efforts to fit in, she is taken back to the midnight library which has begun to fall apart since Nora wants to live now.

    She manages to reach back her root life and gets timely medical help. The message she leaves behind before her suicide attempt brings back her brother to her side. Nora realises that she is capable of doing all the things that she has done in her other lives and decides to live this life instead of running away.

Meet the author:

Matt Haig was born in Sheffield, England in1975. He writes books for both adults and children, often blending the worlds of domestic reality and outright fantasy, with a quirky twist. His bestselling novels are translated into 28 languages. The Guardian has described his writing as 'delightfully weird' and the New York Times has called him 'a novelist of great talent' whose writing is 'funny, riveting and heartbreaking'.

Favourite quotes:

"The only way to learn is to live" - 105

"Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement - an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn't something you measure, and life isn't a race you can win." - 106

"To be a human was to continually dumb the world down into an understandable story that keeps things simple" - 136

"Minds can't see what they can't handle" - 136

"I think it is easy to imagine there are easier paths . . . but maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths" - 163

". . .  a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting" - 171

Source: inews.co.uk

". . . where there are books, there was the temptation to open them" -177

"Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you" - 194

"What sometimes feel like a trap is actually just a trick of the mind" - 241

"But it is not the 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" - 246