The Midnight Library - Matt Haig

 

“Between life and death there is a library,’ she said. ‘And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?”

~ Matt Haig, ‘The Midnight Library’

What a way to start a day; a beautiful book review and insight on books! There were two parts to it:

Part I:

Posting from an ex-manager in FB about this and questions: "Tell me my friends, what would you do differently, given a chance, a choice?"

She being brilliant with words had bowled me with the response, was fascinated with the below:

"And loved. A lot more, without a care in the world, as free as the wind, as wild as an ocean, with all the passion of monsoon at its peak...."

Part II:

The book reminded me of "The Traveler's Gift - Andy Andrews";  not very similar, but there was something about. it. May be how the story begin; and never thought this is going to be my 60 of 2020; like The Traveler's Gift which was 50th. 

Nora and Mrs. Elm. 

Nora Seed has hit an all-time low. After losing her cat, her job, and is full of regret, she takes her own life. However, she suddenly finds herself in the Midnight Library – a point between life and death – and learns that she has an opportunity to live as if she had done things differently. She had felt like she had let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.

“Because, Nora, sometimes the only way to learn is to live.”

In Haig’s book, the mechanism through which transmigration takes place is the Midnight Library of the title. This structure occupies a magical space between life and death. Its facade replicates an ordinary library, shelves with books, but on an infinite scale. The librarian is very wise, as librarians tend to be. She explains to Nora that every book on the shelves is a doorway into a different life. Only one book is an exception to this, “The Book of Regrets,” a volume so heavy and toxic it’s dangerous for Nora to read more than a few lines.But the repercussions of eliminating each regret often surprise Nora. Choices are not the same as outcomes, the librarian warns her.

The librarian encourages Nora to sample a variety of texts, promising that as soon as Nora feels dissatisfied with a new life, she’ll find herself back in the library, ready to have another go. This may happen after only a few moments or months might pass. All this while, time in the library is at a standstill. An infinite number of other lives beckon.Nora is initially reluctant — life is just what she didn’t want more of — but the librarian is firm. Why else would you be here? she asks. So Nora opens her first book.

By the end, she’ll have opened a great many more. Haig describes some of Nora’s provisional lives in detail. Others last only as long as a sentence: “In one life she only ate toast.” Suspense comes from the fact that Nora is dropped in midstream, with no preparation. She always remembers her original life — her root life — so she always has that point of comparison. But she knows nothing of the life she’s just entered. Often she must look for herself online, read her social media accounts, in order to know who she is. More than once she finds herself performing before large crowds, speaking on a subject in which she has no background or expected to sing a song some other Nora recorded, but this one has never heard before. More than once, she’s in a sexual relationship with a man she doesn’t know or mother to children she’s never met. The universe is full of infinite possibility, but the story here remains tightly focused on the internal life of a single woman and all her might-have-beens.

The book is all the richer, as any book would be, for the inclusion of several of his quotes: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams” and “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

This message in the book - especially the bit where the perfect version of her life just wasn’t hers and hadn’t been earned by her and therefore couldn’t be properly enjoyed by her - resonated so powerfully. (I cried like a baby at the end of that life)

I often find myself wondering WTAF happened to my life - the life I thought I was going to have (the one I worked towards for years) - and it stops me from seeing my actual life for what it is; mine. An infinite number of alternatives, but this one is mine.

The concept of ‘The Midnight Library’ is wonderful, and Haig executes it brilliantly. How different could life be if we made another choice? How could one decision change the lives of the people around us? And, is there any such thing as a perfect life? In one life Nora is an internationally famous rock star. In another, she works as a scientist in sub-zero temperatures in the Norwegian archipelago. She is an Olympic athlete, a vegan powerlifter, rich, poor: the possibilities are infinite. Throughout it all, Haig seamlessly interjects magic into the most prosaic of details.  

In ‘The Midnight Library’, Matt Haig is  unflinching in his depiction of depression. He seamlessly articulates how debilitating it can be, how it can feel like you’re stuck in a black hole. There’s so much more to unpack in this book. From ideas around climate change and the connection between ourselves and the world to familial relationships, fame, and the nature of happiness. Matt Haig tackles so many themes with such grace: a reminder to live life to the fullest and appreciate every moment, even the hard ones. As Nora tries on the many shoes of her infinite lives, we see how making space for regrets is one step towards softening their hold over us. We can have regrets without being their prisoner.

Overall, ‘The Midnight Library’ is a truly inspiring story that, yes, is full of hurt and despair, but also love and transformation. Haig eloquently articulates the consuming nature of depression for those who find that words escape them. His earlier book was ‘Reasons to Stay Alive’ and vouch that everyone should read it. 

Every library is a liminal space; the Midnight Library is different in scale, but not kind. And a vision of limitless possibility, of new roads taken, of new lives lived, of a whole different world available to us somehow, somewhere, might be exactly what’s wanted in these troubled and troubling times. Because The only way to learn is to live.