The Midnight Library
Abandoned High School, Alexandria, VA
One of our children gave me “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig. He’d read it during the year and wondered what my impressions would be. The protagonist is a young woman, Nora Seed, mid thirties, who is introduced to us as a teenager in a high school library discussing life’s possibilities with Mrs. Elm, the librarian. Sharp jump to 19 years later, Nora answers a night time knock on the door and is told her cat was run over and killed. She envied the cat because it was no longer suffering, it was dead. This was just one more straw, loss of job at String Theory Music Store, loss of relationship, loss of her parent’s hopes for her, and now the cat. She decided to end it all and the rest of the book is a countdown to her self-scheduled death. The actual time was probably minutes, Nora’s perceived time was years.
In the countdown and again without warning, we are taken to a solitary room filled with books. Mrs. Elm is the librarian and tells Nora this is the “Midnight Library” and each book contains a different outcome for her life, she only has to pick a book and she will be taken to that life. If she is unhappy in that life, she should just wish to come back to the Midnight Library and choose another. The remainder of the book is Nora playing the What-If game with lives from the books. She finds that even in her most comfortable, joyful life, all things and people aren’t the way she’d hoped.
The book is very straightforward with few characters and no subplots. Each life story Nora lived sprouted from an event or relationship or hope/dream she’d had before she decided to commit suicide. Each time one of those lives disappoints her, and that was quite often, she returns to the library. She notes the library’s infrastructure is crumbling a little more with each return visit. Every visit to the library grounds us in the actual life remaining since the overdose is changing everything in Nora and the library. Although I anticipated the story arc and even some of the story events, I was never quite certain how the book would end. Viewed from 10,000 feet, the book almost becomes a cliché…troubled girl, finds herself, rises from the ashes. While true, each adventure is a stepping stone to the next and each new life arc added a dimension to Nora’s grasp of life and life’s meaning and especially life’s value.
As Haig introduces us to Nora’s other possible lives…he brings us to meta-scapes, parallel universes, taking us down the ultimate “what if” path. The technique provides Haig the means to bring Nora through family crisis, tragedy, joy, anger, success, failure, and on and on and on. She searches the library for the perfect life and sometimes comes close but never 100%. In her Library lives she touched perfection many times but never enjoyed the nirvana she’d imagined. Self discovery about her own worth, the value of others, the continuing evolution of life uncovered the reasons to live and she chose life. But it was close.
Other perspectives come to mind which I guess is appropriate given Haig’s multi-channel approach to finding human value. The first is chess which is a presence in most of Nora’s visits to the library. I can’t find the exact quote but Mrs Elm told Nora something like, after three moves, there are over 9 million variations possible, over 250 billion different possible positions after 4 moves each, with even bigger numbers to follow. The placed where Nora worked and was successful on a human level was called String Theory but she had difficulty working with customers and so was let go. Haig’s approach to Nora’s outcome seems loosely based on principles of quantum physics and string theory. Pulling the string might bring results not anticipated or comfortable. Nora got to pick a book based on a high level description of a particular outcome/regret she wanted to relive, for instance, not giving up professional swimming strongly supported by her father. In real life, she’d given it up and he’d died disappointed in her. In the Library’s life, she was an Olympian and her father was beaming. But she wasn’t happy. The people around her weren’t happy. So…back to the library. She’d leave the library with a new life, but like string theory physics, the exact outcome was difficult and not predictable. But, I digress.
I enjoyed the book and found the mental adventures worthwhile. In the back of my mind, Nora’s pending death bothered me. But she came out of it! That disturbed me a little since the mental state that drew her to suicide wasn’t a theme…I mean, did she seek treatment? Why not? What could she have done? Her recovery was a little too “They lived happily ever after.” Lots of life lessons, I think the most important is to pay attention to you, don’t compare yourself with or judge others. They each have their own library.
