A NOTE ON THE SPOILERS
A while ago I got a comment tantrum from a semiliterate rando because apparently some people are too stupid to understand a SPOILER WARNING, so I thought I’d elaborate on my exact definition of a spoiler. I AM GOING TO SUMMARIZE THE ENTIRE BOOK, INCLUDING THE ENDING. Think of me as a very niche Wikipedia. If you have a problem with that, you are welcome to stop reading at any time. I don’t make money from this content. I don’t care how many people read it.
This is your legacy, Fedup: an extra line on an obscure book blog that probably doesn’t even have ten followers. It’s not exactly a Nobel prize, but it’s still quite a nifty little achievement. Your parents must be so proud. Please seek help.
The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers. Kindle notes are saved here.
I suppose this is going to become a trend: I pick up a book on Kindle, and then I go and buy a physical copy before I’ve finished the book. I did it with The Lost World (Michael Crichton) and I did it again with The Midnight Library, and probably it’s only a matter of time before I go for the hat trick. In this case I was massively triggered in the beginning and for a while I thought I’d picked a hell of a bad time to read this book, but I also knew that I needed to own a copy of it regardless of outcome, because the story and the writing are so utterly addicting that I couldn’t put it down.
The titular library first makes itself known at midnight after the worst day in the life of Nora Seed. At thirty-five, Nora has let a lot of seemingly amazing opportunities fly by. She used to be a talented swimmer, but she quit before she got to the Olympics. She almost started a band called The Labyrinths with her older brother Joe and his friend Ravi, but she backed out, ostensibly because of her panic attacks but mostly because her fiancé didn’t like it. For a while she wanted to become a glaciologist, fueled by the encouragement of Mrs. Elm, her school librarian, but she ultimately decided to pursue a degree in philosophy instead. She also chose not to move to Australia with her best friend Izzy, and she ditched her band-hating fiancé two days before the wedding. Now almost completely isolated, Nora believes she has been abandoned by both Izzy and Joe, to whom she has not spoken in quite some time. In their absence, she lives alone in a crummy apartment, funded by her day job at a music store called String Theory, with only an orange tabby named Voltaire (“Volts”) for company. Her most significant moments of human contact from her elderly neighbor, Mr. Banerjee, and from Leo, her sole piano student. With no goals and no thoughts for the future, Nora muddles along as best she can, but her present is weighted with regret.
The wheels start to come off the strugglebus with the unexpected late-night arrival of Ash, a good-hearted surgeon who patronizes String Theory, and who once asked Nora out for a coffee. (She said no by necessity: fiancé Dan predictably did not take kindly to Ash’s invitation, even though Nora turned it down.) He shows up on her doorstep on a rainy night with the news that her beloved Volts is lying dead on the side of the road, then helps her bury him in the backyard when she is swamped with grief. Not even twenty-four hours later, Nora is fired from String Theory for being too depressing. While wandering around town in a daze, she stumbles across Ravi, who bitterly informs her that Joe has been cold-shouldering her because of their failed band. All of this causes her to forget about Leo’s weekly lesson, and she receives an irate phone call from Leo’s fed-up mother, who tells her that Leo was thinking about quitting anyway. Back home, Nora’s one final human contact is pulled from her hands when Mr. Banerjee tells her that he no longer needs her to pick up his medicine for him. With all of her connections apparently torched and no obvious purpose to her life, Nora decides that she no longer wishes to live. She leaves a voicemail for Joe and posts a suicide note on her social medias, then overdoses on her antidepressants and wakes up at midnight on the doorstep of a book-filled limbo.
This limbo manifests in a multitude of ways depending on the viewer: for some it is an art gallery; for others it might be a video store, a casino, a restaurant, but always with a chaperone who takes the shape of a trusted figure from the viewer’s real life. In Nora’s case, limbo is a library and the chaperone is Mrs. Elm. Under Mrs. Elm’s tutelage, Nora learns that the books packed onto the shelves of this library contain the other lives she might have lived if she had made different choices, and that – with Mrs. Elm’s supervision – she now has the opportunity to try some of these other lives. She is also presented with a physical Book of Regrets, which has recorded every regret she’s ever had in her real past, called her “root life,” since the day she was born. (I am normally against book-burning. I would burn that book.) Some regrets are stronger than others, and some are only regrets some of the time: “I regret not yet having children” is an inconsistent regret. Some are vague (“I regret not doing more for the environment”) and some are incredibly specific (“I regret not applying to do a Master’s degree in Philosophy at Cambridge”), but the ones that have been most prominent over the last year or so have mostly to do with abandoning Dan at the altar. For her first attempt at a second chance, Nora therefore chooses a life in which she married Dan and opened a pub with him in the countryside.
All seems well at first: Nora drops into this life and this version of herself after closing time, and quickly learns that she and Dan have set up a successful pub; that they are doing well enough to have hired help; and that they have a cat named Voltaire, though the Voltaire in this life is a chocolate Burmese. Unfortunately, it takes just as little time to poke holes in this peaceful vision. Having opened the pub of Dan’s dreams (never Nora’s), Nora and Dan are now in significant debt and struggling to pay off their loan. They’re trying for a baby but haven’t yet succeeded, their marriage is overshadowed by Dan’s affair with a woman named Erin, and Nora begins to realize that Dan is manipulative and emotionally abusive, and always has been. The moment her disappointment crystallizes, she is ejected from this life and booted back to the library to try all over again. She can never return to the life she just left, but there seems to be an infinite number of alternative options. In theory at least there should be one life she finds satisfactory, and, according to Mrs. Elm, she will eventually be able to settle into that life as if she had never been anywhere else. This isn’t to say that all wishes are possible: at one point Nora asks for a life in which Volts is kept completely indoors but learns quickly enough that he was slated for death anyway when she finds him dead under the bed, having expired from a congenital heart defect.
Thus, Nora embarks on a journey to find her best life and lives quite a number of strange and sometimes exciting lives. In one life she follows her father’s dreams and becomes an Olympic swimmer, then transitions to motivational speaking after her retirement; in another she breaks up with Dan and helps Joe and Ravi form The Labyrinths. But she bombs a TED Talk and is quickly ejected from the Olympian’s life, and in the Labyrinth life she returns to the library after learning that Joe died two years ago from an overdose. Her attempt to run away to Australia with Izzy is equally unsuccessful: she tries this once, only to learn that Izzy died in a car crash en route to Nora’s birthday party. After her death, Nora moved into a shabby apartment with a conspiracy theorist, which is quite unsatisfactory. Eventually Nora realizes she has been choosing alternate lives based on other people’s dreams, and she attempts to do something for herself by choosing a life in which she became a glaciologist. In this life she lands in Svalbard with an international research team, which includes Hugo Lefèvre, another life-hopper (“slider,” in his terminology) who has been sliding from life to life for a long time and has no intention of stopping. Hugo claims that he and Nora have met in other lives and that they are even married in one, but their relationship in this life is cut short by a disappointing hook-up, after which Nora returns to the library.
After another several lives, all of them disappointing for one reason or another, Nora begins to wonder what life might have been like if she had gone for coffee with Ash. The answer turns out to be surprisingly pleasing: in this life she and Ash are married, with a sweet little girl named Molly who becomes the apple of a reluctant Nora’s eye. Ash is a good husband and a loving father (and still a surgeon); Nora herself teaches philosophy at Cambridge, but is taking time off to write a book on Thoreau. They have a lovely house and a dog named Plato, and they are even on excellent terms with Joe, who is happily married to a Dr. Ewan Langford. For a while it seems like Nora could really get used to this life, and in fact she does stay long enough to start soaking in some of the memories of her other self, that is, the version of Nora who built this life. But, slowly but surely, discontent raises its ugly head: Nora learns that Leo – who in this life never came to her for piano lessons – is now the kind of kid who is constantly in trouble with the law, and she also begins to realize that she is an impostor sliding into a life she didn’t earn. Knowing she has very little time before her disappointment sends her back to the library, Nora tells Ash and Molly that she loves them just before she is yanked back out.
Ultimately, of course, all roads lead back to the root life. Having realized during the Svalbard adventure that she does not wish to die, and now also in the middle of a burning library (the library apparently has the power to self-destruct in order to send Nora back to the real world), Nora chooses to embrace the imperfection of her root life. She wakes up one minute after midnight and immediately throws up all over her duvet – well, she did OD – and manages to drag herself next door, where she begs Mr. Banerjee to call for help. Joe quickly shows up to take care of her: he has been in his own personal hell following a bad break-up and has been battling a serious drinking problem, but he’s turned the corner and has been taking better care of himself. Though she wasn’t able to take over her Cambridge self’s life, Nora begins to plant the seeds of it in this present: she ponders the idea of asking Ash out for a coffee, and strongly encourages Joe to pursue a relationship with Ewan, who is a member of the same gym. She also starts a business as a private piano teacher and reconnects with Leo and his mother, and she even hears back from Izzy, who in this version of her life is still alive and still in Australia. Finally, with her life heading in a better direction, she finds the real Mrs. Elm lonely and forgotten in a nursing home and renews their friendship, promising to return every day.
I am constitutionally incapable of not pursuing something titled “Midnight Library controversy,” so I have read some of the criticism of this book, or at least enough to know that it has been called overly simplistic, didactic, lacking in nuance. These things are true. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it reads like a self-help book, but certainly there are times when Nora feels a little too much like a vehicle intended to deliver a specific message. On the other hand, that message is “IT’S GOING TO BE OKAY,” so how can that be bad? I won’t argue for the complexity of the book’s intentions, but I am in a place right now where I need to be bombarded with that kind of unsubtle messaging. At the time of this writing, I am nine months into long-term unemployment and struggling with motivation and mental illness and a pretty serious existential crisis, and this is not the time for nuance. I figured it had to end with Nora choosing to return to her root life, but I wasn’t expecting to connect with her so deeply as she begins in freefall but over time learns to do her best with what she’s got. Now, I have seen that she has been called shallow and whiny and unlikable by other readers, but I don’t agree, and frankly anyone who openly talks about mental health is going to get called whiny at some point because people fucking suck.
I can’t speak for those other readers, but I needed this book. I needed to be reminded that my decisions – the decision not to pursue a field more lucrative and more stable than art, the decision to major in archaeology in undergrad, the decision to take a chance on graphic design, the decision to stay with my last job longer than I should have, the decision to take up part-time work at a bakery – are not the end of the road. It was more encouraging, even more inspiring, to watch Nora begin to pick up the pieces of what she already had, rather than trying to start over from scratch. I liked that she started by offering piano lessons and volunteering for community-based services, planning to donate to scientific research, even pondering the possibility of adopting a dog. I love that she doesn’t end up in a romantic relationship; I had thought that she might end up in some improbable arrangement with Ash, but she doesn’t, and I am grateful. I want her to have the time and the space to focus on getting herself back on track. She doesn’t need the added complexities of a relationship, though one might still happen in time. It was a little strange to see her do such a complete 180 after crashing and burning, but I suppose she’s in a sort of honeymoon period with her renewed root life. I mean, I often go through periods of excessive hope and positivity, usually right before I get the next rejection email.
One reservation: I am less pleased with the treatment of Nora’s alternative selves, who are regarded as replaceable until Nora begins to have second thoughts. I also have some questions. The Nora who attempted suicide is called the “root life,” but as far as I can tell this is only because she is the Nora who got to the library first – or is she? Have there been other Noras in similar situations? If Svalbard Nora had developed PTSD after the encounter with the polar bear and attempted suicide, would she then be considered the root life? Or is Suicide Nora the one and only, and the other Noras only present because of the decisions made in the root life? Does each alternative life spin off in the way that the root life did? That is, does Svalbard Nora have a lot of alternative lives branching off of her own root life, based on her own decisions? I suppose it doesn’t really matter much, because it doesn’t change my objection. The alternative Noras are all people with full lives and relationships and wants and dreams of their own, and it doesn’t seem right that Suicide Nora can just completely displace them – and, in some cases, torpedo their professional lives and personal relationships – on a whim. This is sort of discussed when Suicide Nora replaces Cambridge Nora and begins to have serious doubts, but her guilt has more to do with the fact that she did not build this life for herself. Even if she is aware that the actual Cambridge Nora is waiting to resume her life, she doesn’t spare much thought for her.
And technically, yes, all of these Noras are in fact the same Nora, but at the same time they’re not. They are different iterations of the same person, shaped by their individual experiences: in one life, for instance, the alternate Nora feels every emotion with an unspeakable intensity, and I’m honestly not sure what kind of experiences would have made her that way but she is who she is. It would not have felt good if this less educated, less competent Nora had taken over for Svalbard Nora, particularly given her lack of scientific education and her inability to speak any language other than English. It would have been even more galling if she had quietly gotten rid of Cambridge Nora and completely taken over her life, a fate undeserved on both their parts. In this way, the root life is like a parasite chewing its way through its alternate selves and discarding them, possibly with lasting consequences, always with the option of staying permanently. While I am glad that Nora does eventually choose the root life and that she does give some thought to the other Noras, whom she frequently leaves in bad spots just through sheer cluelessness, it isn’t really enough. The other Noras are not disposable, and I wish they hadn’t been treated as such. Another quibble: Nora is very unkind to these other selves and reflexively sneers at their fashion choices almost upon arrival, and, again, she is technically making fun of herself but at the same time technically not. This is the most complex the book ever gets: is this another way in which Nora is unkind to herself, or is she being unkind to other people who are like her without actually being the same person?
At the same time, possibly the saddest part of the book, at least in the beginning, was watching Nora try again and again to pursue her dreams – or, more accurately, the dreams set for her by others – only to realize how disappointing all of them were. It was sadder to see how fractured her relationships were with the people she loved, even in the lives in which they were supposed to be close. I wasn’t sure if Joe would show up in the end because all of their relationships over all of their lives have been such a roller coaster, and to be frank I didn’t have such a great impression of him. But I am so glad that they were able to make it work in this life. It was such a relief when he came to the hospital, even bringing a peace offering; likewise when he, like Nora, began to pick up the threads of his own life. I would have liked to have seen a similar resolution for Ravi, who in every life seems to be absolutely miserable whether he’s in the band or not, but I guess the book forgot about him. While we’re at it, I’m a little sore at the fake Mrs. Elm for telling Nora that Volts loved her so much he didn’t want her to watch him die, like??? I don’t want Circe to think she has to die alone to spare my feelings, for god’s sake don’t tell me that???
Volts aside, it is impossible to read a book like this without wondering how I would do with my own midnight library. I presume I would end up in a library, though I am also intrigued by the idea of an airport – not actually mentioned in the book, but it seems like a natural form for this strange limbo to take. I guess what I really want to know right now is whether there’s a version of me who picked a steady career in a stable field, who pursued mental illness treatment, who is some version of happy. Or content: is there a version of me who is at least content? Is there a version who became a published author, a popular mangaka, a successful illustrator, maybe the kind who paints giant murals? Is there a life in which I learned animation? I was never the kid who knew what they wanted to be, and I still don’t know. I don’t really want to be anything, but I am trapped in a world that insists that I have to be something when all I want is to create what I want to create without slapping myself with a label, and I want to scream. I don’t think I’d be able to life-hop for as long as Nora does, because probably I’d feel bad and I’d run out of energy fast. But I’d like an answer to these questions, if only to give me some ideas for my current life. There has to be some version of me out there who isn’t weighed down with inertia and depression and regret.
Overall, this book reads like a cross between Life After Life (Kate Atkinson) and It’s a Wonderful Life, and I’m not mad. I particularly like that Nora encounters completely different sets of people based on her choices, where Life After Life‘s Ursula is limited to a rotating cast of people who sometimes show up and sometimes don’t. If it can get a bit didactic and pep-talky in places, it didn’t really bother me: I noticed it, up to a point, but it didn’t detract from my reading experience, and I actually appreciated the mildly over-the-top positivity of the resolution. It isn’t the deepest thing I’ve ever read and I have more questions than answers, at least as regards the parallel universe system; still, it reads quickly and the story is compelling, and all in all this is one premature book purchase that I will never regret.
