User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I liked this book until it suddenly decided to moonlight as a self-help manual, replete with messages that would look great and profound on an Instagram post next to a well-posed cup of coffee with those foam pictures on top. Or embroidered on a pillow — pick your poison.
“She realised that she hadn’t tried to end her life because she was miserable, but because she had managed to convince herself that there was no way out of her misery.”
And these messages have the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Forget the readers figuring it out for themselves — no, the moral and the take-home points will be (didactically) in your face, loud and clear, even if it’s awkward and clunky and stops narration in its tracks. Case in point:
“As she switched to freestyle she realised it wasn’t her fault that her parents had never been able to love her the way parents were meant to: without condition.”
Some of these platitudes would also feel right at home in the Hallmark holiday special movie:
“And … and the thing is … the thing is … what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isn’t. Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement – an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn’t something you measure, and life isn’t a race you can win.”
And I’m just not big on self-help or motivational books. I find most of them cheesy and corny and really awkward and often so painfully earnest that I just can’t take them seriously. It’s just me - I guess I don’t have the right personality to appreciate them. And so I was not too happy with the turn the story took.
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The premise was interesting, and the beginning actually had me captivated. It’s a story of a woman who’s had her final straw - a whole bunch of final straws, really - and when gripped by the oppressive darkness of depression decides to commit suicide.
“Maybe she was just really crap at it. At life.”
“She wanted to have a purpose, something to give her a reason to exist. But she had nothing.”
This may be why so many of even middle-aged people like reading Young Adult books — there’s something quite comforting about seeing a brand-new person, right at the cusp of adulthood, when all the possibilities are still there and no clocks have yet started ticking, and there is enough time and energy to regroup and move on to the road not yet taken. But Nora is thirty-five, an age considered way too late (especially for women, with that damn idea of a biological clock) to not have it all figured out. It’s not the time (at least for women) when the world is considered to be your oyster —
it’s the time when you really are expected to have your shit together. And Nora most certainly does not.
“Well, don’t hang about. Tick-tock tick-tock”, says a well-meaning stranger in that unasked-for-but-nonetheless-given bit of advice.
“When she thought about it – and increasingly she had been thinking about it – Nora was only able to think of herself in terms of the things she wasn’t. The things she hadn’t been able to become. And there really were quite a lot of things she hadn’t become.”
In that moment between life and death Nora finds herself in a library full of books that are the alternate lives she could have had — lives that would have stemmed from one different choice, one different decision. (Jo Walton’s quiet gem My Real Children had a similar premise, and it was wonderful). And the point is - once Nora finds a perfect life for herself in this endless tapestry of parallel and “perpendicular” lives, she can choose to stay in it and live it as her own.
The logical place to start is to revisit all those regrets that weigh her down. And Nora has quite a few of those.
“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 different if you had made other choices … Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?”
And then, after a great beginning (which was not always easy to read given how well Haig was able to capture the snowballing depressing crap happening to Nora)
we careen right into the didactic self-help book where each parallel life exists to teach Nora a lesson that sooner or later will be unambiguously spelled out so that we don’t get it wrong. “She realised, in that moment, that she was capable of a lot more than she had known.”
And if you had any doubts about the ending, doubt no more. It ends exactly like anyone would have predicted at the beginning of that self-help turn, except
it’s even more unrealistically saccharine than I even dared to anticipate. It takes a turn into that meaningless “let you be you” drivel that seems to say so much while actually saying very little. It becomes the cotton candy of advice - sweet but of little value.
“She didn’t need a vineyard or a Californian sunset to be happy. She didn’t even need a large house and the perfect family. She just needed potential. And she was nothing if not potential. She wondered why she had never seen it before.”
And all that relentless hammering of the “profound” message into to readers’ psyche interspersed with tired cliches makes the whole book eventually seem bland and repetitive and tedious and, honestly, a bit trite.
“I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other.”
2.5 stars. I did not sign up to read a self-help manual.
But my opinion is decidedly in the minority — maybe I’m just a crusty soulless cynic. Oh well.
————
“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.’
Nora shook her head. This was a bit too much for a Philosophy graduate to take.”
It’s a bit too much for this science graduate over here, too.
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Also posted on my blog.
Rating: really liked it
“The only way to learn is to live”Fuck, this book hit me so hard. I finished this book a few days ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It has one of my favorite themes or tropes in a book, where we follow a main character who at the beginning of the story is very depressed and possible suicidal and doesn't see the point of life, but then slowly throughout the story begins to build an admiration toward humanity and life. This book was so beautifully written and I love the way this book asks the question: what is the best way to live?
“Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. 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?”It's a really cool concept, that between life and death you enter the midnight library, where you get the opportunity to see how your life would've been different had you made different decisions. I think a lot about this, what my life would be like had I made different choices and wondering if I'm the happiest version of myself? This book forces you to ask hard questions, like what makes a life worth living? And are your dreams for yourself really something you want? I love the way this book talks about regrets and how most of the time our regrets are a load of bullshit of things that are out of our control and they are causing a major burden on our life.
“A person was like a city. You couldn't let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don't like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worth-while.”Matt Haig is such a talented writer and there are so many passages and quotes I'm obsessed with in this book. Much like The Humans (one of my all time favorites) this book has you questioning what the point of life is and thinking how truly absurd life can be. But I feel like this book is much more serious than The Humans, there are trigger warnings for depression and suicidal thoughts in this book, and it was very very heavy on my heart to read this book, where as The Humans feels a lot more light-hearted and hilarious.
“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
But god damn, I loved this book. I cried a lot at the end. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time. I also filmed a reading vlog and I included this book, you can see that here: https://youtu.be/9NiJtrbogyo
Rating: really liked it
Everybody probably knows the premise of this book by now (I mean this book is
everywhere): a library with an infinite number of books. The books of regret. You open one and it transfers you to the life where you didn’t make that particular regret. Was it marrying someone or traveling or maybe other little things.
While I admit I don’t actively pursue parallel universes kind of books on one hand, and on the other, the main reason why I read this book is that I was choosing the best fiction this year (to vote in the GR awards), I was actually looking forward to it. Most of my friends on GR gave it 5 stars. A book beloved by the majority... I had a high chance of enjoying it. Sadly, I didn’t.
First, it was boring. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator wasn’t the best, honestly. Not that her voice was annoying but it was kind of monotone. It certainly didn’t help either that I was listening to Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine at the same time, in which the narrator was so animated reading the book.
I also found all of Nora’s revelations and enlightenment typical. Like sure I already know that. The ending was also painfully predictable from the start. So when you can guess where the book is going, everything in between becomes not so interesting anymore, especially if you don’t care about the main character. Unfortunately, I found Nora dull. She wasn’t interesting as the main character and I couldn’t relate nor care about her and empathise with her story. I can’t believe she was this multitalented in fields that aren’t related whatsoever to each other. She could’ve been an athlete, a scholar or a musician. All successful. All based on life decisions. I also think that she had the privilege of choosing such different options. Many don’t. I don’t mean by that the book of regrets but rather focusing on a particular career path from the start. For example, many parents don’t nurture their children’s interests like music or gymnastics for several reasons maybe they can’t afford it or they just don’t care. But Nora had so many options.
Luckily, the book was short. I also didn’t hate anything about it, hence the 2-star rating. But at the same time, I can’t name anything I liked. Maybe one of the lives in particular was more intriguing than the rest because of the two characters we met and.. the concept. It didn’t help that the book got repetitive sometimes. The premise was much more promising than the book itself. The “message” was also pretty plain obvious. Yet many liked The Midnight Library, however. So it might be more of a “me and not you” kind of book.
But let me tell you this: if you don’t find the parallel universes interesting to read about in stories, don’t read this novel. Don’t be fooled with “LIBRARY. MIDNIGHT LIBRARY. BOOOOOKS.” The library is just more of a metaphor. Most of the events of this book take place in the real world. And unless you’re interested in kind of self-help books (or motivational ones), don’t read this novel either. Because it’s more about what Nora discovered about herself and life, of course, by dealing with/trying to escape from her regrets.
But then again, the majority liked this book so you might too and it's simply not my cup of tea. Yet, it was a dreadfully boring.
Rating: really liked it
Okay! No more words! This is one of the best sci-fi dances with fantasy which carries additional philosophic vibes novel of the year! I LOVED IT! ( this is not kind of toasting for the book and raising your glass kind of loving it. This is more like climbing at the top of the roof and declaring your love by shouting and howling to the moon kind of love. If you read the song lyrics of “ Howl” at the book you may probably understand why I feel so enthusiastic and why I’m writing a high volume review!)
This book is not only about Nora Seed who is trapped in her life, seeing herself a failure, a disposable human waste who has nothing to achieve, will never be missed by anyone . It’s about regrets, unfinished plans, what ifs, approval of families, drugs, mistakes, giving up, realizing other people’s dreams, self regret, insecurities, self harm, love, passion and hate...
When Nora tries to end her life, she opens her eyes in a library filled with books which contain different versions of her life story. If she finds the right book and most proper life she can live fulfilled and happy, that will mean she can be saved!
Thankfully the librarian Mrs. Elm here for here just like she has done when she was a little girl who recently learned she lost her dad.
Nora could be a swimmer, a rock star, a philosopher, a wife, a traveler, a glaciologist, a mother, winery or local pub owner. She can say “yes” to her ex and accept his offer to live in a small town and own a local pub. Or she can say “yes” to coffee offer of a nice doctor candidate Ash to pursue happiness and love. She can win Olympic medals or she can taste the tempting charm of fame with her songs she writes and performs all around the world. She can be everything or anything.
But after living so much lives, nearly thousand different versions, will she find which is best for her and which life form will suit to catch the real happiness?
Can she live without family members or can she handle losing her friends to death?
What does she really want? What does she expect ? And most importantly will she learn to face the things she regrets the most? Because however she’s ready to start her fresh life with open hands, those clutches of regret always pull her back and prevent her to see what she’s really looking for!
Beautiful, meaningful, dazzling, emotional, heart wrenching, poetic, realistic : these are the words which come to my mind after reading this book. Just like the definition of ideal life.
Sigh...
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Rating: really liked it
It is no secret that Matt Haig has mental health issues, dogged by the darkness of depression that has taken its toll on his life. His acute observations and experience of his condition informs this exquisite, inspiring, compassionate and empathetic novel where he creates the concept of the midnight library, to be found in the spaces between life and death, to explore life, the issues that afflict our world, through philosophy and more, endeavouring to tease out what might make life worth living and a joy and what gives it meaning. The device used to implement his goal is the ordinary Nora Seed, who has lived her life trying to please others, who has hit rock bottom, suffering the loss of her cat, her job, overwhelmed by the burden of a lifetime of regrets, seeing no light in her life whatsoever. She is tempted by thoughts of suicide that has her ending up at the midnight library.
The midnight library is magical, for a start, 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 books illustrate the endless possibilities that life holds for Nora and all of us. Nora explores each book, with inquisitiveness and curiosity, the widely disparate 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 present. It soon becomes clear that there are pros and cons to each book/life, to each decision and choice made, each life containing its own mix of despair, pain and regrets that must be accommodated and handled.
Haig offers a touching narrative that speaks of the joys to be found in living, attained through Nora's eyes as she tries to untangle what really matters in life, putting life in context and perspective with all its ongoing changes, complexities, and an understanding no life is perfect in itself. In some ways, this is a version of It's A Wonderful Life, a favourite film for so many people. What I was so struck by is just how many readers might find this helpful for our lock down times, so many have suffered unbearable losses and illness, have had to face not seeing all those we love and mean so much to us, whilst being weighed down with worries and concerns about how to cope with fears regarding jobs, childcare, money and more. A beautifully nuanced novel that I am sure many will love as much as me. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.
Rating: really liked it
Okay. Picture this: you are about to bite into a cookie. A big, warm cookie. Kinda crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, yummy and chocolate chip-y and presumably made with brown butter and flaky sea salt, as all the best cookies are.
And then you take a big ol' chomp, and...oh no.
Not a chocolate chip at all.
This cookie is filled with...RAISINS.
Have you immersed yourself in that experience? Really felt the high expectations and the all-consuming disappointment?
Good.
Because that was my experience with this book.
This is not a bad book, necessarily, just like raisin-y cookies are not a
bad food. (They are closer to granola bars than cookies, but my favorite in the Chewy Granola Bar Variety Pack was always oatmeal raisin, like a six-year-old grumpy old man, so that's not a negative in my personal lexicon.)
It's just that it could be much better. And I thought it would be.
I thought this was going to be a magical realism-y (my favorite), book-filled (my favorite), beautifully written (everyone's favorite) romp through a brilliant new world.
Instead, it was a very fluffy, very...done-before-feeling It's A Wonderful Life-esque feel-good discussion of suicide.
(I mention this further down, but this is SO, SO triggering for suicide.)
That's not a bad thing. It's just not what I wanted. Or needed. Or anything the genre really aches for at all.
But whatever.
Bottom line: I should bake cookies and reread The Starless Sea. Both instead of having read this and as a daily routine.
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pre-reviewfor a book with library in the title, and a library as the setting, and "library" four times in the synopsis, this had remarkably little to do with libraries.
(also, this is massively, unrelentingly triggering for suicide. fair warning because i wish i'd been more prepared!)review to come / 3 stars
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currently-reading updatesstarted this and immediately realized i'm mentally comparing it to the Starless Sea already.
both book + i are destined to fail.
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tbr reviewSomewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality.um.
(deep breath)
YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES
Rating: really liked it
"That is just me. I add nothing. I am wallowing in self-pity."
No truer words have been said by Nora, the world's largest wet blanket. Woe is her, folks.
Nora ends up at
The Midnight Library, a place between life and death, because she doesn't want to live anymore. The library is full of books, each representing a life she could've had, had she made different choices. Now she has a chance to undo all her numerous regrets and to try out all the lives she's missed out on, to see if there is another one she would like better.
Lest you think I'm cold-hearted for not loving this, I assure you, I'm not. Normally, I love sappy, cheesy, inspirational mush. I watch Hallmark movies. I believe in soulmates and happily ever after. I cry during every sweet scene in every movie. And yet this book left me so cold inside, and I'll try to put into words why.
For one thing, this story doesn't come across as fiction so much as self-help disguised as fiction. The lessons to be learned in here are pretty obvious right from the beginning, yet they are presented like some sort of epiphany that can only be understood if explained slowly and repeatedly. We are forced to endure these lessons over and over every time Nora goes back to the library. Either Nora is the most dim-witted of characters, or the author thinks us readers are.
Another problem is that it's really hard to connect with Nora. She'll take a situation, suck every ounce of joy out of it, and interpret what's left in the most negative way possible. She's full of regret for every decision she's ever made, and thinks the grass is always greener. However, other than being negative, she literally has no other personality traits. She's a blank slate, dull and uninteresting.
I also have issues with the core messages in this book. Nora finally learns her lesson, but only after having fixated on each regret, remade every decision, and lived all subsequent lives. I'm also uncomfortable with the implication that if you're depressed, you only need to change your outlook and you will feel better. That goes against everything we understand about mental illness, including that it's important to seek out professional help, that it can be chemically based, and that it's not a matter of not trying hard enough.
So many readers loved this book, as evidenced by its overwhelmingly favorable reviews. But it's just not for me. This is the second book I've read by Matt Haig, and I've had trouble connecting with both. So I think it's time I part ways with this author and just accept that we are not compatible.
Rating: really liked it
My mind is blown; my soul is lit and I am happier.
"She realised, in that moment, that she was capable of a lot more than she had known."
(In one of her many lives)
.
.
.
"I think you might have lost your way a little bit."
"Isn't that why I came to the Midnight Library in the first place? Because I had lost my way?"
"Well, yes. But now you are lost within your lostness."
This story is so fascinating and one of the most amazing stories that look into life, dissect it and offer too many chances to live in each making us wonder what could have been if we we're given a chance to live in each.
It talks about regrets, relationships, dreams, pets, friendships and other relationships, what-could-have-beens and most importantly how to live in the present and make the most use of it.
The writing is amazing and picks up really fast. Once you get into the book, it's hard to put it down.
A thought provoking story, it will make you wonder things about your own life and what you could have been in the infinite other universes.
It makes me believe that I can do so much in my life at the moment and learn what I could have done from the things that happened instead of regretting about it.
A must read.
It will make you want to have a hard look at your life and make you think about the many unimportant things that you've been worrying about all your life and instead make you want to focus on the things that really matter.
A sci-fi, fantasy, contemporary kind of writing makes the narration so effortless, fast-paced, interesting and intriguing.
Loved it.
Rating: really liked it
Unpopular opinion!
In between life and death is a library, The Midnight Library. With books curated just for you..
You will start with “The book of Regrets” your regrets, which could be “not telling your father you loved him before he died”, not marrying a certain sweetheart or not following a dream.
Select another volume and see how a different choice may have played out.
Discover that an alternate choices may not have necessarily led to a different outcome.
This is a MAGICAL premise!
But, I must be honest.
As much as I wanted to LOVE this, I just wasn’t AS riveted by the explorations of “what could have been”.
This will appeal to those who enjoy stories which revolve around sliding doors, alternate realities and time travel. That isn’t me.
I gravitated toward it because of the appeal of the library.
We all know that books resonate (or don’t resonate) with readers based on our own personal experiences.
Perhaps if you share a certain regret with our leading lady, Nora, you will connect with this book more than I did.
Perhaps, it was just timing.
This book has almost all 5 star reviews, so please read others for an alternate opinion.
Or, if you are one of the few, who like me, LOVED the idea more than the story, know now that there is at least one other person who felt the same way as you.
Rating: really liked it
What a shame - this could have been such a great novel if the author had the capacity to write about the issues of regrets and suicidal thoughts with maturity, complexity and depth. Instead, we get this young-adult-like novel in which the main character behaves and thinks like a 15-year-old, and every other character around her is just a cardboard poster rather than a human being. This is not what I expected from Matt Haig, whose previous books I recommended to people who wanted to understand depression. It's like it isn't the same author at all. I can't believe how silly and superficial its treatment of its topics is. Even with the fantastic elements of the premise, this could have been so much better.
Rating: really liked it
[Th
Rating: really liked it
okay WOW. This was amazing.
I must say that I was kind of skeptical? going into this because the idea is SO good that I didn't know if the writing would be able to live up to it (which can sometimes happen)... but alas, no! Haig's prose is fast-paced and easy to read, but also believable and deeply philosophical. There is just so much to learn from this book. I mean, you COULD read a self-help book on stoicism, or you could just read this :)
Rating: really liked it
I think this is a really deeply personal book, and it's definitely one that resonated with me. It is kind of part self help book and part story, but that was why it meant a lot to me. I think I'd love to reread it to fully get its message. I can see why people wouldn't like it, but I can also see why it'd be really meaningful to a lot of people. I fall on that side.
Rating: really liked it
Corny like a Hallmark movie and probably the least subtle book I've ever read.
Update: for those butthurt about my sentence-long review I just wanted to say that as a person who also struggles with depression, this book will become my 13th reason if y'all keep trying to defend it to me (jk)
Rating: really liked it
This was cute and the concept was great but unfortunately it really lacked some depth for me!
