The New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | Independent (London) Ten Best Books of the Year “A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits.”—The Washington Post The dazzling reader-favorite about the choices that go into a life well lived, from the acclaimed author of How To Stop Time and The … into a life well lived, from the acclaimed author of How To Stop Time and The Comfort Book.
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
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A lovely, creative story about the roads not taken in our lives. Consumed with depression, Nora attempts suicide and finds herself caught in between lives, in a library staffed by her childhood school librarian. Each book Nora reads sucks her into the life she didn’t choose—glaciologist, musician, marriage to the boyfriend she rejected. It’s a Wonderful Life meets Groundhog Day. The ending was a bit easy, but the book left me feeling bright and optimistic. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the brilliant Carey Mulligan, which added considerably to the experience.
Earlier this year, I whittled my mountainous TBR to a tolerable level, and then I went on an adding binge for all the 2020 books I’d considered but never decided on. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is one of those books, and when it became available through the NY Public Library (I’d been on a waiting list for months) last week, I accepted the offer and dived in that night. For the most part, it’s a contemporary fiction novel in which a character explores the different roads she could’ve taken had she made alternative decisions. While it’s deemed part fantasy/sci-fi, it’s really not… this is more about the emotional connections and understandings of a young woman who’s considering suicide as a way to end her pain.
Nora Seed was once a competitive swimmer but gave it up. She had love in parts of her life, but lost it. She had friends and a good life but walked away. She had a bad relationship with her family but tried to mend it. Everything she attempted seemed to fail, and one day, she decides life isn’t right for her. When she passes over to an unknown place, Nora learns she hasn’t quite died yet. It’s midnight, and she has an opportunity to look at different lives she could’ve had… except there’s a twist — it’s through books with a familiar librarian. She might only have enough time to see one or it could be thousands. And if she dies in one of those lives in the moment she chooses to witness, her life is definitely over. So much to consider here… and I really enjoyed all her exploration.
I’m not gonna comment in detail on the way suicide is handled in this book. I know it’s bugged some readers, and perhaps it’s viewed as sharing the wrong messages. I don’t think that’s at all an easy topic and there will always be tons of opinions. To me, this is purely one person’s experience, and I respect the way the story is told. There are reasons why it works; there are reasons why it’s too fluffy. But the key for me is the trajectory of Nora’s emotions as she visits each life. I adored the movie ‘Defending Your Life’ for the same reasons as I very much connected with this book. The ability to discover what happens in your own life when you’re not looking closely enough is sheer beauty.
I think this will work even better as a movie, as the visual effects of the library and its destruction will be amazing. Having a few key character relationships will tug at our hearts. I would definitely read more by this author. I recommend this for readers who enjoy time travel (but not purely for the scientific aspects of it) and who aren’t triggered by anything related to suicide or thoughts of harming oneself. Those items withstanding, it’s compelling and rich with thought-provoking concepts.
I devoured The Midnight Library in one delicious day. I love finding a book that I can sink into, enjoy the ride, and feel pleasantly validated by the ending. The whimsical premise (traveling through books in a library to revisit various regrets from the past) reminded me of the TV series, Finding Erica. If you enjoy this book, give Finding Erica a try too.
This is an enjoyable book, it’s my first by Matt Haig, but it won’t be my last. It’s a book about recognizing all the possibilities of your life, but it’s more about letting go the regrets of what you could have been. Nora Seed is miserable, miserable enough to be not only thinking about suicide, but acting on it. Instead of the blackness of death, she awakes in the Midnight Library accompanied by her Elementary School librarian, Mrs. Elm. Mrs. Elm explains that the library is filled with books that represent all the possibilities of her life, an infinite number of paths, created by an infinite number of choices. When she chooses a book, she will be transported into the life, and can live it until she decides if it’s a life she would want to continue.
Haig writing is strong; clever, clean, and no distractions. The book is full of great observations and insights.
“A person was like a city. You couldn’t let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don’t like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worth-while.”
We get deep into Nora’s character and she felt genuine in her struggles to me. If anything bothered me about her character it was how talented she was. How many people have the talent to be Rockstar, an Olympic Swimmer, a successful Ted Talk speaker, etc. etc. However, I can forgive this, as it serves to drive home the central theme of the book.
My biggest problem is mechanism that allows Nora to revisit her past, a suicide attempt. Largely, Haig handles this delicate subject well. I appreciate authors that take on subjects as challenging as suicide, but its dangerous to have the suicide attempt itself be the mechanism that triggers a chance relive your life. Why? Because somewhere out there, someone is struggling so hard, that have such regrets, that they will talk themselves into believing anything. I enjoy Time Travel books and I follow a number of Facebook groups dedicated to this subject. In those groups I have found that there are a concerning number of people that have such anguish over a past decision or choice that they want desperately to believe that time travel is possible. They beg, plead, and even offer money for people to reveal the secrets that will allow them to travel to their past to change their past choices. If someone is suicidal, any idea that suicide itself might provide a chance to relive their life is unsafe. Suicide is never the answer and only wastes the potential of a valuable life. So while I applaud Haig for taking on this important subject, I just wish the method that triggered the journey to the Midnight Library were different; a magic potion, a freak accident, a visit by an angel, anything but a suicide attempt.
A well-written parable of one women’s journey to move beyond her regrets and find meaning in her life through a supernatural library that’s filled with books that represent all her possible lives.
A very interesting book about parallel universes. Who would you be if you’d followed a different path? Why stop with one? Who would you be if you’d followed any number of paths that have opened to you in your life, no matter how small the path? It was a fun read over the holiday
A charming fable about a seemingly ordinary life as Nora—burdened with regret—receives the extraordinary gift of trying out lives other than the one she’s living. A life-affirming story that will remind you of the classic film It’s A Wonderful Life.
Wow. I loved this. What an imaginative page-turner about a woman stuck between one life and the next both literally and figuratively. My first read by Haig but not my last.
Nora Seed struggles with depression and finally has reached her breaking point. She decides to suicide and leave this world behind. Although she doesn’t die – she ends up somewhere in between life and death which for her is a library. It is full of books of the paths her life could have taken had she made different choices. There are millions of books showing that one tiny decision can impact our lives in profound ways.
Nora selects many of the books and travels to her different possible lives. Through this she learns to face some of her past regrets and re-examine her life before she tried to commit suicide. Ultimately she must choose between staying in one of her possible lives or death.
I loved the premise of the book. There were a few times the plot got a bit slow which is why I couldn’t give it a full 5 star review. It’s definitely worth the read.
I loved the idea behind this book. An entertaining read!
This book was recommended to me so now I’m passing it on as well. I loved the premise of the book – a chance to live a life without regrets. A chance to choose a life that might have turned out better. It is as much a story as an experience. Inspiring and encouraging. I highly recommend it.
Enjoyed the descriptions of the library and how the new “lives” were chosen. I became impatient with the reluctance of the main character to “play the game,” but enjoyed watching her slowly evolve.
I knew I would love this book from the first time the author talked about the premise on Instagram, and I wasn’t wrong. It’s both heartbreaking and uplifting, tragic and witty. It highlights the shades of dark and light that life is filled with to a tee. It’s a modern classic and should be read by everyone, especially those (like me) who struggle with their mental health and live with anxiety. Ultimately, it’s a reminder that life is what we make it, and anything is possible if we want it to be.
“The only way to learn is to live.”
The Midnight Library was a book that caught me by surprise.
To be honest I had never read anything by Matt Haig before and wasn’t aware of the type of books he writes, so when I saw a story about a woman that finds herself in a library with access to living other lives where she can erase her regrets I thought I was in for something light.
Little did I know.
Granted, Matt Haig doesn’t have a genre per se and he also writes children’s books but from what I found his work is psychological, mostly dark and always deep.
And I found this in the best way.
“We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence.
We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.”
The book takes us on a journey through the lives of Nora as she tries to find her best life by changing what she thinks is wrong in her current one (or ‘root’ as it’s referred to in the book) and seeing how individual choices affect not only herself, but also the reality around her.
And this for me is what the book is about.
I won’t go into a philosophical debate over the theme but there are some things that came to my mind that I can’t help writing (and I won’t mind discussing them in the comments if anyone wants to).
First of all, everyone has regrets they wish they could erase, and make their lives better by doing so.
Second, we all have an idea of who we are and we think we wouldn’t be any other way.
And here we are shown how things change, and how we change according to the choices we make, until we lose who we used to be when we started our journey.
And so the conclusion for me, at the end of almost three hundred pages with all my regrets pilling up as I look back on my life at age 38, is that maybe we just have to press on and see what we can do with the cards we’re dealt and how we play them.
“In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living.”
This review turned into a reflexion rather than a review, and for that I’m sorry.
I’ll end this by saying it’s a very well written book and an easy read, even if a little on the heavier side.
You will want to know more not just about Nora, but about every version of her, and without noticing you will want to know how all the other people you meet are related to her in each new reality.
But the ending is the most important part because of what it will make you do.
It will make you put the book down and just sit, in silence, staring into nothing and just thinking. I did.
It will make you think about your life and the choices you made. I did.
It will make you, maybe, pick up your phone and look for the number of a friend you lost contact with and think about texting him. I did.
But most of all, it will make you want to live. I know I do.
This book was both inspirational and entertaining and will stay with me a long time after the last page was turned. Loved it.
What if the weight of your regret at your life’s choices was so heavy, life itself became a burden too heavy to endure?
But what if you had the opportunity to visit the thousands of other lives you might live if you’d made different choices along the way?
In Matt Haig’s life-affirming The Midnight Library, protagonist Nora Seed is on the brink of suicide.
In that in-between life and death state, Nora visits the Midnight Library and opens the many books to her many parallel lives she is living in the ‘multiverse’ where her choices were different and another, sometimes similar, sometimes very different, life unfolds.
As a character, Nora is an everywoman, sympathetic and at times irritating while so very human and relatable.
Will Nora die? Will Nora be permitted to live another -parallel- life? Will she want to?
The Midnight Library is chock full of statements and quotes which will stay with me for a long time. Among them:
“If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don’t give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library
Highly recommend.
What an exquisite book. A tome that examines all the dreams we wish we’d followed through on and a thesis (charming, witty, and beguiling) on appreciating what we have rather than wallowing in what we don’t. Pages 277 and 278 will be two that I frequently return to and solidly place this book on a forever shelf.
I read this in one day. I loved following Nora’s journey through her Book of Regrets. [book:The Midnight Library|48693877] is a marvellous way to reflect on your own regrets, and dare I say it, reading it is a superb way of letting go of your own regrets.
As Nora hovers on the cusp of death, she tries on a hundred, a thousand, different lifetimes, each based on a decision she never made in her real life. What would happen if you said “yes” to a coffee with that cute boy at the cafe? What if you never let your cat go outside? What if you never held private piano lessons. What if you had never given up swimming?
Matt Haig writes the best books to make to realise, life is what you make of it. And that you can choose to be happy. That your last decisions don’t need to take up space in your brain as regrets. Accept them and move on.
I loved this book.
I wanted to love this book since it’s been so popular. But I didn’t. I didn’t not like it, I’m just not really a fan of the whole “flashing around to different lives because of one decision” aspects of stories. I feel like that’s been done too much, and I found myself feeling like I needed to reread The Five People You Meet in Heaven.
If you like that sort of thing, and I guess a lot of people do, then you’ll love this. I just feel like it’s overplayed. I did enjoy some of the lives though. 3.5
Life is so short and wanting to make the most of it can be peoples ultimate goal in life. But sometime the smallest things or actions can bring happiness, purpose, and contentment. A fanatic story of one woman’s adventures of how her life could have ended up with the slightest actions.
You fall down you get up and keep going! No regrets!