Imagine a world in which there’s a point between life and death where you get the opportunity to revisit the regrets you never even knew you had. That’s the premise of Matt Haig’s “The Midnight Library.” I’ll be talking more about the plot of this story and include my thoughts towards the end, so as always, be wary of any spoilers you may want to avoid. I also want to acknowledge that the story does include talk of drug use and suicide, so please be mindful of this if you care to continue reading.
The story follows a 35-year-old woman named Nora who spends most of her time alone, working a retail job and avoiding the opportunities she’s presented in life. When we meet Nora, she’s absolutely disenchanted with her life. She called off the wedding she was planning to have with her ex-fiancé. Her best friend is across the world living her own life. Her parents are gone, and her brother is no longer speaking to her. After all of these less than appealing factors to her life, her cat dies, and she is pretty much fired from the piano teaching and music store retail jobs she has. All of these things lead Nora to re-evaluate her life and think she no longer has a purpose in the world. Feeling absolutely without hope, she decides to take her life.
Thinking that the end is the end, Nora is completely shocked when she wakes up in a library. In the library, she meets the librarian in charge. It is the same librarian Nora had when she was a child in elementary school. The librarian, Mrs. Elm, explains to Nora that between life and death there is “The Midnight Library” — a place that holds all the moments of regret a person has in their life. In the library, one may choose any regret they have ever had and then live the life they would have had if they chose to follow that path. The catch is that once you are in a life, you can stay as long as you are satisfied. If you become unsatisfied with that life, you will slip back into the library. You also have to be very careful in your new life as if you die there you get no more chances.
Throughout the story, Nora chooses to visit several different lives. She finds herself dissatisfied with almost all of them nearly immediately when she realizes that her idea of these perfect lives isn’t the reality. Eventually, Nora has had enough lessons from the different lives, and she wakes up in her real life with a new outlook and a new lease on her life.
Now, as far as my thoughts on this book go, I found the story to be good in theory. It was an interesting way to think about life and the feelings of inadequacy we feel when we don’t live the lives we imagined we’d be living. It shows that the regrets we have might not always lead to lives we love or even like. That being said, I thought that the story was good but it failed to have the lasting impact I felt it could have had. It turned itself into an almost self-help book towards the end, and I felt it could’ve gone without that. It ruined the suspension of reality that makes books like this special and impactful to life in an indirect way.
Overall I give this book a 6/10.