Content warning: Brief mentions of suicide
Have you ever wondered what life might have looked like if you had chosen a different major in university? If you had taken that job opportunity on the other side of the city? If you had forgiven your ex?
There’s no need to wonder about these what-ifs in Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library. Published in August 2020, this book has circulated on the book lovers’ side of TikTok and YouTube, which is how I found myself adding it to my cart while doing some late-night shopping. I’ve been trying to get back into reading in 2021, and I figured I may as well start off with some fiction with rave reviews all echoing, “Highly recommend!”
I definitely didn’t expect to start and finish this book in one sitting. I also didn’t expect to start philosophizing about existentialism while staring at my own bookcase, wondering if I should pull a random book, flip to the first page and suddenly see a new life played out before me.
The book follows Nora, a woman in her thirties riddled with regret, missed opportunities and loneliness. Nora’s life is full of “used-to-be’s” – she used to be a competitive swimmer destined for the Olympics, used to be a talented musician with the chance to make it big, used to be the daughter, sister and partner that anyone would be proud of.
Now feeling like she doesn’t contribute much to the world, she makes a plan to die by suicide. However, Nora’s plans fall through when she finds herself in a library with an infinite number of shelves and books detailing every possible life she could have lived. She is then presented with an opportunity: she can try out any life she likes and choose to live there, or death can come to her.
Nora embarks on infinite journeys, moving between them once she realizes why she doesn’t fit into each life. She becomes the Olympic gold medalist of her father’s dreams, a rockstar with fans all across the globe, and even a scientist studying glaciers in the Arctic. Her infinite lives are filled with rich experiences and amazing people and everything a person could ever want. That is, until she realizes that none of it is what she wants anymore, and never was.
Haig does a masterful job of making the reader feel as regretful yet hopeful as Nora does. With each new book that Nora opens, the reader is pulled into the fabric of a new life, wondering if this will be the one that Nora decides is preferable to death. While I did find that the intricacies and rules of the Midnight Library were hard to follow at first, I believe that the overall themes of potential while facing the unknown shines on every page. Haig is exceptional at identifying Nora’s fears and replacing them with possibility and fulfillment.
More than anything, this book makes you evaluate your own life choices, like ones that you haven’t considered in years or the ones you don’t want to think about at all. For me, I couldn’t help but wonder about the path that led me to that particular moment, sitting in my bedroom, reading that book.
Every person you’ve met, every memory you’ve made, and every plan that has fallen through has culminated in the current moment you live and writes another sentence in your book. As satisfying as it might be to go back in time and fix a mistake or two, every possible challenge you encounter creates the life you now live. In The Midnight Library, Haig makes sure that both you and Nora know it.
If this book doesn’t give you a new lease on life, it’ll certainly make you think about the next time you smile at someone on the train or gather the courage to ask out that cute person at the coffee shop. It might even cause you to turn a new page.
Here’s to infinite pages, infinite chapters and infinite books.