The Midnight Library
Author: Matt Haig
Published by: Canongate
Pages: 288
Format: Hardback (Independent Bookshop Edition)
My Rating ★★★★★
Published by: Canongate
Pages: 288
Format: Hardback (Independent Bookshop Edition)
My Rating ★★★★★
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 her in extreme danger.
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 her in extreme danger.
My thoughts:
From the author of How to Stop Time and The Humans comes this poignant, unique novel about hope, regret and forgiveness - and a library that houses second chances.
This is a captivating and warm story of a young woman who is just done with living. She sees no place for her in the world. And so, she ends up in the secret library…a place where she has an opportunity to take a different path, lead an infinite number of different lives, and try and find what it is that makes her truly happy.
I love Matt Haig’s message throughout his books of gentleness and kindness. And this may well be my favourite so far.
Of course, the library consists of books, all green in colour. The library also exists between life and death. Firstly, Nora has to look at the huge tome of the Book of Regrets. In it are all the times where she regretted a particular decision at a turning point in her life or other small different possible turns. The library has a limitless number of books, and these books are far from ordinary.
Haig sprinkles gold dust in each book, offering Nora the opportunity to see how her life would have turned out if each and every decision at every point in her life had been different. The various books illustrate the endless possibilities that life holds for Nora and all of us. Nora explores each book, with inquisitiveness and curiosity, the widely different lives that could have been hers, no easy task as she has to slip into each new life with the complications of being unfamiliar with it and do so without alerting the other people close to her.
Nora is allowed the opportunity to become a “slider”, to go and try out the lives she might have had. She starts with the bigger decisions like what would have happened if she had continued with a particular relationship, or a particular career path etc. If she is content enough, she will stay in the other life, if not she will return to the library, but time in her “root life” is running out.
It is certainly one to get you thinking. I was thinking about major turning points in my own life when I may have chosen differently, and I would have had a totally different life. As always, the author makes you think about what really matters and it is done with great humour and real heart. There’s something cosy and safe about this book, despite there being many occasions when Nora Seed is in peril. I’m so glad I was able to read it in just a couple of sittings from home as the rain poured outside. It felt perfect for this time of year as we approach the final few days of October.
Imagine It’s a Wonderful Life of our times. A beautiful, heart-warming hug of a book. Matt Haig knows how to pull on your heartstrings and he does it oh so well. It’s been snapped up for a film adaptation by Studio Canal, and I’m really intrigued to see it the story told on screen next!
The Midnight Library is quietly profound and deeply meaningful. It’s one I know I’ll remember for a long time. What a beautiful book, as expected.
Overall reaction:
From the author of How to Stop Time and The Humans comes this poignant, unique novel about hope, regret and forgiveness - and a library that houses second chances.
This is a captivating and warm story of a young woman who is just done with living. She sees no place for her in the world. And so, she ends up in the secret library…a place where she has an opportunity to take a different path, lead an infinite number of different lives, and try and find what it is that makes her truly happy.
I love Matt Haig’s message throughout his books of gentleness and kindness. And this may well be my favourite so far.
Of course, the library consists of books, all green in colour. The library also exists between life and death. Firstly, Nora has to look at the huge tome of the Book of Regrets. In it are all the times where she regretted a particular decision at a turning point in her life or other small different possible turns. The library has a limitless number of books, and these books are far from ordinary.
Haig sprinkles gold dust in each book, offering Nora the opportunity to see how her life would have turned out if each and every decision at every point in her life had been different. The various books illustrate the endless possibilities that life holds for Nora and all of us. Nora explores each book, with inquisitiveness and curiosity, the widely different lives that could have been hers, no easy task as she has to slip into each new life with the complications of being unfamiliar with it and do so without alerting the other people close to her.
Nora is allowed the opportunity to become a “slider”, to go and try out the lives she might have had. She starts with the bigger decisions like what would have happened if she had continued with a particular relationship, or a particular career path etc. If she is content enough, she will stay in the other life, if not she will return to the library, but time in her “root life” is running out.
It is certainly one to get you thinking. I was thinking about major turning points in my own life when I may have chosen differently, and I would have had a totally different life. As always, the author makes you think about what really matters and it is done with great humour and real heart. There’s something cosy and safe about this book, despite there being many occasions when Nora Seed is in peril. I’m so glad I was able to read it in just a couple of sittings from home as the rain poured outside. It felt perfect for this time of year as we approach the final few days of October.
Imagine It’s a Wonderful Life of our times. A beautiful, heart-warming hug of a book. Matt Haig knows how to pull on your heartstrings and he does it oh so well. It’s been snapped up for a film adaptation by Studio Canal, and I’m really intrigued to see it the story told on screen next!
The Midnight Library is quietly profound and deeply meaningful. It’s one I know I’ll remember for a long time. What a beautiful book, as expected.
Overall reaction: