Author: Matt Haig
Publisher: A&U Canongate
Genre: Modern & Contemporary Fiction, General Fiction
Year of release: 2020
Release Date 1st September 2020
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Trigger Warning: Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide, Pet death
Synopsis
Between life and death there is a library.
When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.
The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren’t always what she imagined they’d be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.
Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?
Review
Nora Seed finds herself between life and death in a library; The Midnight Library it’s whilst she’s visiting this library she discovers she has opportunities to live as if she had turned right and not left thus allowing Nora to undo regrets along the way. During her travels Nora Seed can also find her perfect life the life she was meant to lead at long last, is coming and Nora seed is ready for it, she can finally ask the age old question what is the best way to live?
Although Nora Seed no longer views herself as being of use in this world thanks to the black dog of seasonal depression she makes for a likeable heroin, one I felt I must see to safety before I could come back to earth.
“The only way to learn is to live”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library
The Midnight Library has a delightful albeit small minor characters, my favourite being a librarian by the name of Mrs Elm.
I had heard the hype surrounding this book, it was hard not to because it is everywhere and I purposefully avoided finding out to much because I wanted to make up my own mind and I’m so glad I did. I was worried I might not have been as absorbed in the world before me and that I would’ve been waiting for something to happen.
I devoured The Midnight Library in a day and a half, this was the book that cured my slip into a very real reading slump, the story was original, the writing was descriptive, well informed without being over bearing.
“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.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library
Topics like suicidal ideation and depression are covered with respect but even in total darkness there is shades of light, however small Haig has presented readers with options, I loved the options Nora was presented with and found myself wondering could I? Would I choose differently? I cannot decide but I also love that I don’t have to
Given the state of the globe right now I personally think it’s now more then ever important to appreciate the little things and whilst The Midnight Library is by no means small nor are the topics it covers during my time visiting the library I felt as if I needed to appreciate more of the little things in Nora’s worlds, as I l knew she couldn’t, thus making more of a conscious effort to do so and experience those things in my own life.