It’s so easy to get stuck in our heads when things are not going as we’d planned. It’s so easy to imagine all of the different routes we could’ve gone down instead of ending up where we did.
Matt Haig creates a fictional space where folks can travel through all of the ‘what ifs’ and figure out if they can find a happy place to continue to live their life.
Nora, the protagonist of the story, is a chronically depressed and anxious, single, recently-fired 30-something woman, whose cat just died. The day she gets fired, she decides to take pills to end it all.
Instead of dying, though, Nora ends up in a semi-purgatory-like place known as the midnight library. At the midnight library, she is free to reflect on her regrets and change the course of her life by living in alternate universes where she didn’t make the decisions she regretted. The novel takes us through her different realities and her final ultimatum.
tl;dr: if you don’t like to hear “things happen for a reason” stop right here and don’t waste another minute on my post haha
In the Midnight Library, you can’t take the same book out twice
Matt Haig, The Midnight Library: A Novel
I really enjoyed the novel because it made me think about my own ✨what ifs✨ and the way that I’ve been living for the past few months. I thought back to all of the regrets I’d been holding on to and imagined what life could be like if I’d decided to say yes / no in different situations, if I would’ve stayed in Boston post-Wellesley, etc.
It is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other peoples’ worst enemy.
matt haig, the midnight library: A Novel
However, as I kept on reading, I kept on seeing how all of Nora’s would-be lives just didn’t come together the way she envisioned. Even when she reaches the best life for her – where she gets the guy, has a baby girl and a dog, lives a happy and fulfilling life – she feels like an imposter and lives waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to be taken back to the Midnight Library. At the end of the novel, Nora gets dragged back to the Midnight Library (it’s burning down!!!) because deeep down inside she knows that even the best alternate reality is not the reality she wants. As she frantically searches for the book that will save her and take her back to her original life, she scrambles to figure out what she’s supposed to write inside of the book. Eventually, she writes I’M ALIVE and that brings her back to her real life.
Although it’s not the ending we all saw coming, it was the best way to bring the book to a close. In those last pages, I also found myself realizing that all of my regrets and all of the decisions I chose were what brought me the life lessons and growth I desired. Things might not be perfect, but they have come together the way that they’re supposed to. I cannot say that I will always live my life without regrets (because let’s be real, there’s a bit of regret deep down even when we don’t want to acknowledge it), but for now, I have enough clarity in my heart to know that I have to trust in myself and the universe and keep chugging along.
We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite
matt haig, The Midnight Library: A novel
If you decide to read Matt Haig’s “The Midnight Library: A Novel”, I hope it brings you the clarity you need and that it resonates with you as much as it did with me.
Feel free to comment and reach out if you’d like to discuss!