What if?
There are myriad decisions to be made during a life.
What would happen if one opted for one decision over another.
Nora Seed is a down-on-her-luck woman in Bedford. She’s lost her job at a music shop, her cat, the one piano student she was tutoring, and, she believes, some of the relationships about which she cares the most. Arriving at such hopelessness and despair, she makes a pivotal decision in her life: the decision to end it.
Teetering somewhere between life and death, Nora encounters the Midnight Library, a library of sorts where the only books lining the shelves contain alternate versions of her life that Nora can try out to determine whether they’re a good fit and if she’s destined to remain in any of them.
She has to really want a life, though, to stay in it.
Enter, too, Mrs. Elm, the caring librarian who guided Nora through her father’s death and with whom she spent countless hours playing chess. Mrs. Elm guides Nora through the Midnight Library and Nora’s Book of Regrets, a collection of decisions she would take back if she could…and in the Midnight Library, she can.
In the library’s endless rows of green books, Nora gets a redo and is able not only to see what would have happened had she chosen otherwise, but to live those lives.
As she moves between her alternate lives, Nora learns how her decisions affect both herself and those closest to her. Her regrets become fewer the more lives she lives. She learns what’s really important, and, gradually, arrives at the realization that her attempt to end her life might have been the worst decision of all.
Can she overcome that decision, act on the possibilities presented to her, and live?
And what would that life look like if she could?
The Midnight Library is a book about a life replete with possibilities, like all lives. Its main character is in a serious state of despair at the start and opts for trying to end her life, which could be triggering for some. But author Matt Haig, who himself contemplated suicide early on, focuses on the possibilities.
Every life has them. One just has to believe in them.
Availability: Book; eBook & eAudiobook in cloudLibrary Rating: *** Stars (I liked it) Reviewer: Katina, Area Librarian
ARE YOU AND THIS BOOK A GOOD MATCH? DISCOVER MORE WITH NOVELIST APPEALS! The Midnight Library
GENRE: Science Fiction
WRITING STYLE: Engaging
TONE: Mystical
SUBJECT: Death; Depression; Libraries; Options, Alternatives, Choices; Parallel Universes; Purgatory; Quantum Theory; Suicidal Behavior; Young Women
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