The Midnight Library – An Exploration of Life Choices, Regrets, and learning to want to live.

Information:

• Goodreads: 4.00 out of 1,855,934 Ratings
• Age Category: Adult
• Genre: Contemporary
• Series: None

Summary:

Nora’s life sucks. She’s backed out of everything that had the potential of benefiting her life, her brother doesn’t talk to her anymore, and her cat just died. So, she decides to kill herself. Ups doing that, Nora find herself greeted by a familiar figure and is given the option to see how her life could have been different had any choice been made differently. This is a book about a depressed woman exploring ways that she has or could have found new love in living.

Review:

“Between life and death, there is a library…and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you made other choices. Would you have done anything different if you had the chance to undo your regrets?“

The book begins with a countdown to Nora’s death. Her life is in shambles. She goes throughout her day in a melancholic way, feeling as if there is nothing worth living for. She got scared of her band and their potential, so she quit. Now her brother, the only one she had left, isn’t speaking to her. His best friend says she’s got a fear of life, and that hits. Her cat died earlier that morning and she was told by a lovely guy who had once asked her out for coffee. Their interaction was awkward and stilted. Nora also ended her engagement to her long-term boyfriend, Dave. And, ya know what? She just doesn’t know if it’s worth it anymore. So she ends it.

“Dear Whoever, I had all the chances to make something of my life, and I blew every one of them. 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. If I felt it was possible to stay, I would. But I don’t. And so I can’t. I make life worse for people. I have nothing to give. I’m sorry. Be kind to each other. Bye, Nora”

Nora finds herself in a library, confronted by her old librarian. And she’s told about the midnight library. Obviously, there’s still a piece of her interested in living a bit, or she wouldn’t have ended up in the library. So we get to see her try on different lives she could have lead. She sees that her marriage would have been unhappy if she had went through with the wedding, her best firmed would’ve died if she had actually given up everything and moved to Australia with her, her brother would have overdosed if she had continued on with the band. But she also could’ve been an Olympic swimmer. She could’ve been in Antartica on an adventure, determining why the ice was melting so quickly and attempting to find a solution. She could have married Ash, the guy who asked her out for coffee. They could’ve had a beautiful little girl.

‘While the Midnight Library stands, Nora, you will be preserved from death. Now, you have to decide how you want to live.’

Throughout the book, we watch Nora find different reasons to live and different reasons not too. Why live if she’s going to be on antidepressants in every single life? But isn’t the love and adventure worth it? The writing is straightforward, to the point. It isn’t flowery, but I feel as if that’s what helped make it more impactful. This book isn’t saying much that I don’t already know, but it was impactful and poignant nonetheless. Nora is valid in her frustrations. We are all valid in our frustrations with life and our depression and our suicidal ideation. Yes, unfortunately, suicide does occasionally seem like the best or easiest answer.

By watching Nora work through this, the reader gets to work through it as well. What’s the sort of life you’d love the most? What would it take to want to live again? There are some characters who don’t. They’d rather continue hopping from one existence to another, never having to settle for one life and never having to cope with their regrets. Nora finds a life she loves, though. The one in which she went on that coffee date with Ash and fell in love, got married, and had a child. She loves it so much that she’s angry when she gets ripped from that life and back to the library. Yet, it’s because of her unhappiness and imposter syndrome that she was taken away. It was her life, yes, but she felt like an imposter. She jumped into the middle of her life, without seeing how she built the connections she did.

I think it’s easy to see that I loved this book. Nora is a great main character. She had so much potential but was so afraid of everything. I feel as if many people could relate to her story in one way or another. We all wonder how our lives would be different if one thing changed; or, at least, I know that I do. This book was a fun way of looking into that. It’s comfortingly written. Reading this made me feel as if I were sitting on my couch, snuggled in a blanket with a book and a warm cup of coffee, while listening to a thunderstorm. Matthew Haig deals with heavy topics in a cozy way. He doesn’t always add something new to the conversation. The “Just find a reason to live” is something I’ve been told often throughout my own mental health journey. What Haig has done that’s so wonderful is he’s actually given me examples of what that would look like. And he has shown that, no matter if our choices were ‘better’ or not, mental health isn’t something that can simply go away because of specific choices. It’s there. It’ll likely always be there, just like Nora and her depression. But we can learn how to cope with it. We can learn to not just live with it, but thrive with it.

Let me know what you thought of the book in the comments and thank you for turning in!