Book Review: The Midnight Library
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. - From Amazon
TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE
I first saw this book splashed across Instagram last fall and was immediately drawn to the synopsis. Being able to live an infinite number of lives? Trapped in a library? Sign me up!
The book starts as Nora counts down the hours then the minutes to when she takes her life but instead of dying, she gets “caught” in a kind of “in between”, not dead but not alive. She is able to go back and see where her different decisions would have taken her and in doing that, she comes to the realization that everything in her life happened for a reason.
At first, I wasn’t immediately drawn to Nora as a character. But the more of her past she shares in the subsequent chapters you can’t help but really love her.
This is the first book of Matt Haig’s that I’ve read and I really liked it. Normally, I read a lot of adult fiction/historical fiction/high fantasy, so to read something that, especially after the very trying year that was 2020, was very real and brought attention to the subject of mental health was very refreshing. His writing is very succinct and to the point, so if you prefer wordy and descriptive writing, this may not be the book for you.
Rating: 4/5 stars
