The Midnight Library by Matt Haig 🌙
The story revolves around Nora Seed, a woman who is unhappy with her life and decides to end it. However, instead of dying, she finds herself in the Midnight Library, a place between life and death where she has the opportunity to explore the many different lives she could have lived based on the choices she made.
The Midnight Library is magical; to begin with, the library contains an infinite number of extraordinary books. In each of these books, Haig weaves magic, granting Nora the chance to glimpse how her life might have unfolded if she had made different decisions at every juncture. These books portray the boundless potential that life offers not only to Nora but to all of us. This task is no small feat, as she must adapt to each new life, navigating the complexities without alerting the other people present. It becomes evident that each book, each decision, and each choice come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. Every life carries a unique blend of despair, pain, and regrets that need to be acknowledged and managed.
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 had made other choices… Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?
It is really a cool concept, where you can explore alternate lives based on different choices, is fascinating. It makes you wonder how our life might have turned out with different decisions and questioning if we’re truly living the happiest life. This book pushes you to confront tough questions about the meaning of a fulfilling life and whether your aspirations are genuinely your own. It challenges the idea of regrets, highlighting that many of our regrets are beyond our control and needlessly burden us.
I loved the ethereal magic of the Midnight Library and the various mind-bending scenarios that Nora went through. All in all — this book was amazing and I could not recommend it more!
“I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other.”
