The Midnight Library
The Midnight Library Book Review by Matt Haig
The Midnight Library is another grand example of thetypedwriter receiving a book as a present from someone they care about. The Midnight Library is not exactly my cup of tea.
The premise is fine, but it wouldn’t be a book I’d pick up myself for multiple reasons. Because of this, my view of the book is colored differently.
As I’ve already mentioned, the premise is fine. The plot revolves around Nora Seed, a young woman who no longer sees the point of living her life after failures that span professional, romantic, friendship, and personal choices.
Nora feels like she no longer has anyone in the world who loves her or cares for her. Because of this, Nora sadly decides to take her own life.
Instead of ending up in heaven or hell, Nora ends up in a sort of purgatory-like state. She enters the Midnight Library. She’s shocked to find herself in a dimly lit room with her old librarian, Ms. Elm, one of the few people in Nora’s life that she remembers being kind to her.
Ms. Elm explains that Nora is between life and death. Nora has choices. The books surrounding them are actually infinite possibilities of other lives that Nora has lived if she had made different choices throughout her life.
What follows is Nora Seed experiencing different lives. In one, she’s a famous rockstar. In another she’s an Olympic swimmer. In others, she’s a glaciologist, lives with her best friend in Australia, opened a pub with her ex-boyfriend, Dan, and many more.
However, no matter how many lives she experiences, she finds that every single one is disappointing in one way or another.
Like me you can probably call the ending of the novel by chapter two. By that, I mean you can probably predict what life she ends up choosing and what Nora ends up learning.
This isn’t necessarily a con, but it’s not positive either. The ending was very predictable and while the theme of learning to live life and not take it for granted is a good one, Nora also takes an exceedingly long time (in my opinion) to learn this lesson.
My other annoyance with this book was its repetitive nature. Nora enters the Midnight Library. Nora goes into a new life of hers. Nora learns something. Nora goes back to the Midnight Library. Repeat cycle.
Again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the repetitive nature was aggravating and made me not want to read. I wanted to shake Nora and tell her the solution to her own problems (which were glaringly obvious).
For some people, I’m sure this repetitive nature was expected and welcome. For me, it made the plot dry and not engaging.
My last point is that Matt Haig as a writer is good. His writing style is simple, but effective. He has some poignant points that resonated with me and truly made me stop and think, which is always a great sign in a book.
However, I also feel like he tried too hard to be deep. This is more of a personal critique, and I wholeheartedly understand if people disagree with me. That being said, every chapter where Nora experiences a different life, Matt Haig offers some profound epiphany, that was, to me, generally not very profound.
At the end of the day, this was a simple book. Vini, vidi, vici. I came, I saw, I conquered. Or, in this case, I received, I read, I finished. This book won’t have a lasting impression on me, but that’s okay. It was an enjoyable, simple read talking about living life to the fullest. If this sounds like a book you need or would enjoy, I say go for it.
If you want something a little more engaging, a little more surprising, and a little more unique, I would steer clear.
Recommendation: I genuinely think this novel would be better off as a short story. It wasn’t bad, but the plot dragged after Nora’s third life. It’s a simple story with a good theme that will remind you to not give up. That being said, the main reason I finished it was so that I could move onto another book. Take what you will from that.
Score: 5/10
