The Midnight Library by Matt Haig - Book Review

 The Midnight Library by Matt Haig - Book Review

Title: The Midnight Library

Author: Matt Haig

Publisher: Canongate

Publish Date: August 13 2020 

Rating: 4/5

Summary(blurb): Nora's life has been going from bad to worse. Then at the stroke of midnight on her last day on earth she finds herself tranported to a library. There she is given the chance to undo her regrets and try out each of the other lives she might have lived. Which raises the ultimate question: with infinite choice, what is the best way to live? 

**This book review contains spoilers for this book. If you still want to read the review, go ahead. However, I strongly recommend you to read this book before reading my review.

Although this book is apparently heavily recommended on lots of bookish social medias like booktok (book tiktok) and booktube (book youtube), I didn't know this until after finishing the book (I don't follow many booktubers and I don't have instagram at all). I picked up this book from a local secondhand bookstore after a friend recommended it to me, and I quite liked it.

This book is about a woman named Nora in her 35th year of life, and as we start the book Nora is experiencing the worst time of her life. She's just been fired from her job, her brother's been distant to her ever since she backed up out of his band, her much-loved cat's died, and life just seems not worth living. As Nora puts it, "through my own carelessness and misfortune, the world has retreated from me, and so now it makes perfect sense that I should retreat from the world". Just as she is about to kill herself, she suddenly finds herself in an endless library with a literal infinite amount of books. Meeting another person called Mrs. Elm who had been her old school librarian, she learns that each book contains a different life she might have lived had she made a specific choice in her life differently. Starting to read one book transports her into that life, with the time being the present moment, and if she feels disappointment or desire for a better life, she settles in that life forever. 

I loved the concept the book is based upon and the episode-style story, but I just think the ending was a little too predictable. The blurb at the back of the book doesn't really show the ending, which is why I had relatively high expectations for this book, but a few chapters in, it quickly became apparent that this was going to focus on an obvious theme. Accepting the present and having no regrets about the past, this message to "live life the best you can from one moment to the next" seems like a very true and very real but too overused to give insight or a new perspective. Or is that just me?

Anyways, I loved the episode-like chapters where Nora would go into different possibilities into what her life could have been. Changing some of her major decisions, whether it be to not quit competitive swimming or to move to Australia or to not back out of the band, led to major changes in her life. While in her original root life she was a sad depressed person stuck in her hometown, she could have been a famous glaciologist or a superfamous Olympic swimming champion or a supersuperfamous rock star. I highly enjoyed the radically different experiences Nora got to have, and the things she learned from those experiences. 

However, some parts of the book I didn't really like were the parts in the library, with the librarian Mrs Elm telling Nora straight up what she- and the readers of the book- should learn from that experience. The metaphor using the ceiling lights was painfully obvious (yay you want to live again, that saved this whole library from collapsing in on itself, the will to live is very important) and the conclusion was appropriate but slightly disappointing in its obviousness. 

This book is un-subtly a suicide prevention-style book that makes you realize the beauty of the ordinary, etc etc, and I do think it's an appropriate message; however, Nora's situation is more a sort of severe midlife crisis rather than just a suicidal one. Aside from the message, I loved the stories told of different Noras' lives and enjoyed it very much in general.

I would recommend this book for grade 7/8 and up, for the philosophical and contemplative content.

Rating: I would give this a 4/5.