Nora Seed’s life is going nowhere. Her cat has died, her love life is stagnant, and professionally, her career is nearly non-existent. Nora has spent her entire life trying to please others and excel at everything from competitive swimming to music to getting an education. Yet all of it seems to have gotten her in a perpetual downward spiral of regret, shame, and a feeling her life is worth nothing.
Filled with remorse, Nora decides to take her life. And what unfolds is expertly conveyed in Matt Haig’s beautifully written novel, The Midnight Library.
In-between life and death, Nora finds herself at the Midnight Library. Awaiting her is the kindly Mrs. Elm, a librarian from Nora’s childhood. The Midnight Library is no ordinary library. It is a place where one can open a book and be transported into an alternative universe, which reflect the various choices a person can make in one’s life if given another chance.
In one life, Nora is living with her husband (an old boyfriend) in Australia running a pub. In another, she’s an Olympic-winning swimmer and motivational speaker. Nora works as a glaciologist in another live, and is also a wildly successful rock star in yet another. But all of those lives aren’t as ideal as Nora may want. They are filled with sadness, estrangement, death, and bitterness.
But it’s there is one book Nora opens, and it just might be the perfect life if things had gone differently. In it, she’s happily married to a doctor named Ash. Together, they have an adorable daughter named Molly. And Nora is taking a sabbatical from her job to write a book on Thoreau. Could this be the life she’s always dreamed of? Or perhaps, she’s meant to live the life she was living, but one where she can make more positive choices and changes.
The Midnight Library is stellar. It at turns heartbreaking and uplifting. Haig has a way of writing that connects as well as tells a story due his deep well of empathy and compassion. The Midnight Library is It’s a Wonderful Life with a twist, with fantastical sci-fi moments. It’s a book to be savored, understood, and beloved, a book that resonates with people, places, and things that make our lives worth living.
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