Author: Matt Haig
Genre: contemporary, fantasy
Rating: 5/5
Verdict
*slight spoilers ahead*
If ever you needed an uplifting read, The Midnight Library would be a choice for you.
Meet Nora Seed. She lives with depression and is unhappy with how her life has turned out. After a moment of desperation, she finds herself in the Midnight Library. The library is a liminal space found between life and death. It exists at midnight, and midnight alone. It houses a limitless supply of books, each of which contains an alternative life Nora might have lived had she made different decisions to the life she lived, her ‘root’ life. Guided by the Librarian, Nora must decide which life she wants to switch to. And if she doesn’t decide, there’s disastrous consequences at stake.
This book made me very happy because it reminded me of my favourite passage from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, which the novel actually references at one point:
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor…and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath, Pg 73.
Life is full of options and often it can be difficult to be sure if the decisions you made were the right ones. The Midnight Library shows it’s incredibly easy to consider the ‘what if’s and decide your dissatisfaction with your life is linked to the regrets from your past. Romanticising the ‘what could have beens’ is an easy, passive way of explaining discontentment in your life. It can also be a massive barrier, stopping you from looking forward or even appreciating what you’ve achieved to date. It can also not be true.
As Nora demonstrates, whether you become an Olympian or a rock star, life is not automatically populated with happiness and contentment. No life is without flaws, you just have to be able to see the potentials and be sure they outweigh the lows. Perfection only exists in the imagination; when these dreams become reality they’re no longer faultless. And if this is the case, what really makes that life the better option? This is a question The Midnight Library explores in depth as you and Nora live several lives trying to seek ‘the one’.
The prose is descriptive and full of details, which I love, particularly in the library scenes. The library cannot exist without Nora and this is made clear to the reader at every point. From the flickering lights at moments of uncertainty, to the varying shades of green for each book reflecting the unique options each book provides, the library is an extension of her.
One aspect that did throw me slightly was her lacking awareness of backstory when she enters each new life. She has no memory of the life and no emotional connection to it straight away, which I’d argue does make her more likely to reject the life. However, towards the end of the novel you realise these background details are earnt the more Nora chooses that life. Perhaps the blank slate approach is to remove any bias towards that life; her choice is based on her own personal experiences rather than those of the prior ‘Nora’ that had been living it. In which case the concept of the library endorses the theory of tabula rasa and it’s nice to see the continued presence of philosophy. I’m also very proud to have brought in my minimal philosophy knowledge to this book.
In a world where we’re constantly seeking the unattainable, it’s important to be reminded to remember and acknowledge the potential of our current everyday lives. An ending filled with promise, The Midnight Library was book I closed with a smile.
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Escape Through The Pages 