The Midnight Library
A Novel
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4.3 • 680 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
"A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits."—The Washington Post
A New York Times bestseller | Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick!
"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?"
A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, from the internationally bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time.
Somewhere 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. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Haig (How to Stop Time) draws on quantum wave theory in this charming if sometimes laborious account of the many possible lives of a depressed woman. Nora, in her mid-30s and living in the small English town of Bedford, suffers from "situational depression" though, as she wryly observes, "It's just that I keep on having new... situations." After she gets fired from her job and her cat dies, she attempts suicide, only to wake up in a book-lined liminal zone, where she is guided by a librarian: "Between life and death there is a library... Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived." There, Nora discovers what would have happened had she not abandoned her promising swimming career, called off her engagement, or left the rock band she started with her brother. Each time an alternate life disappoints or doesn't feel quite right, Nora exits, reappearing in the library to continue browsing for the perfect story. While the formula grows repetitive, the set changes provide novelty, as Haig whisks Nora from Australian beaches to a South American rock concert tour to an Arctic encounter with a polar bear. Haig's agreeable narrative voice and imagination will reward readers who take this book off the shelf.
Customer Reviews
Lovely
Such a lovely heartwarming tale at a time when it’s most needed 🤍
Captures the many conflicts of being human
Loved this story about the struggle of living your own life as is through Nora. The wanting more or different holds us all back. Easy read with lots of connection.
Predictable
The story line was mapped out for you within the first 30 pages. In the beginning the author does a great job to hook you in. As I continued reading further and further though it became more and more predictable. Like when you write an essay and give your main supporting facts in your introduction paragraph - this author gave all the story line highlights that he was going to take you through before you even read the rest of the book. The ending was nearly exactly what I thought it would be. Additionally the ending lacked real life experience and expectation of those suffering through what the main character went through.