The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

"Maybe this was it. Maybe this was, finally, the life she was going to stay put in. The life she would choose. The one she would not return to the shelves.

I could be happy here."

Time has been played with in books and novels for as long as books and novels have existed. It’s been traveled in, bent, changed, erased, attackedz; you name it. The Midnight Library has its charm that way, not biding to the rules of time but defining it using the experiences people can have and live through every day. Time may be the central issue of this fiction piece but the soul and essence of being human and boasting a message of living life on your own terms is certainly the takeaway.

A middle-aged broke, jobless, loveless spinster, Nora Seed, has given up on life, quite literally. After some devastating experiences that push her past the already teetering edge she stood on, Nora tries to commit suicide. Life, however, has other plans. She’s brought to the midnight library. A place between life and death, endless and forever standstill. Here she finds that her own soon to disappear consciousness has given her a chance to live again, in a life she chooses with no regrets.

Little did she know, a life with no regrets isn’t easy to find, even if what you wanted could be chosen like food from a menu.

The library unites her with her school-time counselor, Mrs. Elm, who seems to be her spiritual guide through this whole experience. It's basically a way for the extraordinary to dumb down its effects on mere humans like us. After all, explaining a near-death experience that brings you to a mystical library where you hop between potential lives may seem easy to grasp on paper, maybe not so much in person. Mrs. Elm explains that every book in the library represents one rendition of a life she could have lived and that she may choose to experience them all until she finds one she is truly happy to be in. But as Nora jumps from lost lovers to forsaken careers, disappointed family, and missing friends, she finds that no life completes her the way she wants or the way she needs.

Something is always missing.

Throughout the book, an urgent feeling of finding the right life is pushed not just for Nora, but for us as passive onlookers as well. As a reader, I was pulled into learning more about each book and life she opened just to see if she finally found happiness. It felt close to home. Who hasn’t wished for a different life at least once in their own?

Nora comes off quite hopeless and unwilling right at the beginning, yet the personality she shows as the story progresses hits many major character arcs. Her constant need to know things, to fix things, to regret, to love, and to want, make her more and more relatable and down to earth as a protagonist to the reader. Despite her in the main role, the way Haig has weaved all the various characters into Nora’s lives added depth and humanity to each story. Each character was shown to have led a different life with each decision Nora makes, probably to exemplify the major point of how even our smallest decisions can impact the lives of those around us.

There was a point in the book when I felt Nora could’ve found her happily ever after. Being married to an amazing guy, having a beautiful daughter, working with her true passion, but ultimately this life, too, fails to make the cut. For the right reasons of course. It was pivotal for the story to make Nora realize that the life she has originally is still one worth living for and more importantly worth living in.

As a final comment, it’s sure to say that Haig plays with your emotions in a predictable but equally enjoyable way in this bestseller. You may not be on the edge of your seat every second minute, but you’ll surely be comfortable enough in your place to not want to put the book down. Every page in the book brings to life every experience Nora goes through in its own magical way. Almost as if… the book had a life of its own to show.