In Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, Nora’s life is at a standstill, crumbling around her. Her parents are dead, her brother won’t speak to her, her former bandmate blames her for the band’s break-up, she’s just lost her job, and her cat has been run over by a car. Nora decides to end things but unexpectedly wakes up in a mysterious library where the only other person is her elementary school librarian. In the library, Nora learns she has an infinite number of other possible lives, each created at moments of choice and decision throughout her life. She has a chance to see her life’s regrets and try on as many of these other lives as she wants to try to find one where she feels fulfilled. But as she explores these other possibilities, something threatens the very foundation of the library itself, something only Nora can stop.
I did not plan to read two books featuring suicide attempts back-to-back, but The Midnight Library and The Last Story of Mina Lee are very different. In Nancy Jooyoun Kim’s novel, Mina’s experience with suicidal ideation is very grounded in realism, the focus on the immediate and now, while Haig takes a much more speculative, and ultimately hopeful, approach. The tone of the novel aligns with a particular kind of British literary fiction subgenre that’s been popular over the last ten years or so: small town or small neighborhood setting; ordinary, everyday characters; quirky protagonists who feel disconnected or even ostricized from their families, friends, and communities; some sort of whimsical element that belies something much more sinister; and a charming, technicolor tweeness to the cover art, a la The Music Shop or Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. Gounding the novel so strongly in the tenets of its subgenre softens the depth of emotion and despair that triggers Nora’s suicide attempt, allowing us to go with her on this journey of exploration and meaning with a sense of optimism for her.
Nora in her present state is eminently relatable to anyone feeling like life has stalled or even passed them by. It’s fun exploring Nora’s possible other lives with her, a series of little mysteries to solve as she discovers her identity and relationships in each new version. The first several go deep in creating the new life for us, everything noted down to the tiniest detail, and the vignettes get briefer and briefer as she explores more and more possibilities, coming closer to her final decision. The novel did start to feel a bit long in that part but not so much as to take away from the story. Her past lives remind me strongly of Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, and it was a bit hard at times to not draw comparisons in the tone and style.
Overall, I liked it. The Midnight Library is a creative, thoughtful, even joyful examination of how life is worth living and that sometimes the choices that feel so hard to make only require the smallest shift to push us in a better direction for ourself. Personally, I didn’t necessarily feel that it stood out from the pack, but I found it to be a surprisingly buoyant read at an overwhelming time. However, I know many people who have had strong reactions of wonder and amazement and even relief upon reading this book. I think that’s what makes it very special–it is speaking to people where they are, whether they are experiencing grief or fear or depression or overwhelmedness or are supporting others in those places. Just like Nora’s experience in the library offers her a lifeline, the book seems to touch people deeply, offering them a lifeline in challenging times. I think Haig does something wonderful–he writes The Midnight Library so it is exactly what each reader needs when they read it: hope.