[book-review] Matt Haig - The Midnight Libary

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?

I started this book on a late evening during work after I finished another one. I haven't read anything from Matt Haig before but heard so many good things about this one and the synopsis sounded really interesting. So I started it, not knowing what I would get and immediately was hooked...

It starts with Nora, a young woman who works in a music store where she teaches the piano. The day starts with her, sitting in the school library as a young girl, playing chess with the librarian, Mrs Elm. They talk about glaciers and what she wants to become, when she gets some terrible news.

Then we're at the present. A day like everyone else it seems. But it's the day Nora decides to die. Her cat dies, she's late for work, she gets fired, sees someone from school who's putting her down even more and with all this, she's deciding to do it. She's heading home and the hours pass until it's midnight and she suddenly finds herself in a huge library. Nora is meeting her old librarian Mrs Elm again and is suddenly confronted with The Midnight Library and their secrets and wonders. 

Nora is confronted with all her regrets and Mrs Elm teaches her how to choose what life she could have lived. If she find's the "right one", she'll stay there until she dies. If she has any doubt that the life she choose is not for her, she'll return to the Midnight Library again.

“You see, doing one thing differently is very often the same as doing everything differently.”

Nora tries one thing after the other, meets others like her and yet nothing seems right... No life she tries, is the right one and believe me she tries everything. A vineyard in America, being a rock-star, staying with her ex and opening a pub, being a swimmer, a philosopher, exploring glaciers. She's trying out every life you can imagine. After hundreds of lifes, she's finally staying in one. But is it trully the one she always wanted? The one she's craving deep inside of her? The one that'll make her fully happy?

“And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you’re in.”

I don't want to spoil the book too much, but her whole journey is not as boring as it seems, it's fascinating and full of learning. Of accepting mistakes, of accepting that these mistakes weren't mistakes at all. A story full of learning and growing. 

“The only way to learn is to live.”

It made me happy to think about a "life after death". That there will be a library waiting for all of us.
It also made me happy, that there were so many quotes that just talked about depression and the sadness inside of us. The regrets that will tear us down. It was quite inspirational and left me sobbing every few pages. 
I've been very down a few years back as well. Constantly crying, not wanting to get out of bed or my flat, not sure how to go on. Thinking that I wasn't worth it. That people didn't "want" me. Having felt all this and reading how Nora was doing, definitely brought me back to that time. But reading The Midnight Library, also made me happy. Made me think about the things we want to change. Things we did wrong and that it isn't always as simple as we think it is. It might teach you one or two things and lets you see things a bit differently than they might seem now. It might let a small light shine on things. It might make things a bit more livable than before. 

I was so captured by the book and read it in one go. A few hours later I was finished and I was once more sobbing at the end of the whole story. A happy end, I might add. I really really loved the book.

I don't know how to tell you to go read it, but I do now: GO READ IT! Go read it and enjoy the wonders of The Midnight Library. Go read it and you might fall in love with life.

“It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.”