The Midnight Library: A Novel

by Matt Haig

Many of us have wondered how life would have turned out if we had chosen a different path when we came to a fork in the road.  Matt Haig in this work of fiction suggests we could find out in a waystation between the world of the living and the dead.  He calls this waystation the Midnight Library.  The reader is asked to suspend logic and accompany Nora Seed on a fantasy where she slides in and out of the various lives she could have had.

In the opening chapters Nora Seed experiences a series of disappointments in her life and decides to commit suicide.  But while the beginning is dark, the ending has a message of hope.    She reaches the waystation that is the midnight library. The midnight library is stocked with books that allow her to enter a life she could have had if she made a different decision at points of her life.  What if she had continued with the swim team in school?  What if she had become a glaciologist working in the Arctic?  What if she had married the person who proposed to her? And so on.  

As she opens a book Nora Seed slides into the life.  She experiences the life at a particular point in time.  The experience can be brief or last for days.  If she decides the life is not what she wants she returns to the library to choose another book.  Surprisingly, though she doesn’t know all that has happened to bring her to this point in her new life and some of her associates feel she is a little strange events continue to unfold.  Note: It is a fantasy.

The book is well-written and an easy read.  The fantasy works for many people as evidenced by the fact that the book has been on the New York Times best seller list for several weeks.  But for most of our book club the fantasy was too unbelievable.  It did generate a discussion of alternate paths our lives may have taken.  But, on the whole we felt it was more appropriate for a young adult.  And, given the topic, a young adult with no depressive tendencies.

— Ash Rao