The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
TW: suicide, self-harm, drug, alcohol, death, depression, cancer
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is a stunning, creative book about what it means to want to truly live your life.
When Nora Seed decides that she wants to die, she finds herself in the Midnight Library, a space that exists between life and death. Within each book in this library is another version of Nora’s life—ones where she became a rock star, an Olympic swimmer, a vineyard owner, a glaciologist, wife, a mother. All Nora has to do to live those lives is open the book.
With the help of an old friend, Nora faces the regrets she has about her root life. These regrets center around making the wrong choices, choosing the wrong career path, and not living the life she wanted. As she travels through each book and each possible version of herself, she erases the regrets, one by one. She learns that just because someone’s life appears perfect on the outside, it doesn’t mean that it exists without its hardships.
Matt Haig’s description of Nora’s depression is honest and raw; it’s done well and written with respect. At the start of the story, a contributing factor to Nora’s depression is that she’s given up on all of the dreams she had as a teenager. As the novel progresses, Nora opens the books and lives out her dreams as a singer, as a swimmer, and as a glaciologist, studying the effects of climate change on glaciers. But even in these lives where she makes the choices to follow her heart, there are still things that happen that are completely out of her control—in one life, her brother dies of an overdose. In another, her best friend is killed in a car accident. In yet another, she’s in an unhappy marriage with an adulterous husband. None of these things are her fault, but they still happened, simply because life happens.
We don’t get to control what happens around us; we can only control how we react and what paths we choose. In visiting all these versions of herself, Nora found ways that she could be happy despite the tragedies that those other Noras faced. She found ways in which she could be loved, ways in which she could find fulfillment. She found ways to be hopeful again.
At its core, this book is hopeful. And Nora’s hope is inspiring. It serves as a reminder that we can move forward, so long as we take that first step. Life is going to be hard, no matter what we do. We don’t get to relive our lives over and over. We don’t get to experience every sight and taste and smell because we are only human, and we can only do so much. But as Nora so simply says: “We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything… The impossible, I suppose, happens via living.”