A Book Review: 'The Midnight Library' by Matt Haig

I will not lie to you, I started this book on a Wednesday evening and finished it by Thursday afternoon. Dare I say I took a day off and sat on my blue couch and read and read and read. I highly recommend a day of to read and I definitely recommend this book to be the one you do read.

I recently turned up the volume and frequency on my newsletter (join here). I took a big break on instagram and found I wanted to connect more directly and the newsletter was the most accessible beyond in person events at this time. I shared in one of my emails that I am in a pattern right now of reading a self help book and then a novel or type of fiction and then back to self help, like a buffer. And someone wrote me about this book and my gut said, listen to her.

So let’s talk about the book.

‘The Midnight Library’ is written about the in between of life and death, a purgatory of sorts and for the main character, Nora Seed, her in between is a library. Shelves on shelves on shelves of books of what might have been. One interesting note: Not everyone’s purgatory will be a library - another character we meet later is in a video store like a Blockbuster (how neat).

“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?” (Matt Haig, The Midnight Library)

Nora Seed has attempted suicide and yet is not fully alive and not fully gone and we meet her there in the library with a decision to make - to live or to die. Throughout the experience of each chapter, the author, Matt Haig takes us on a journey of different life scenarios. We explore regrets (oh how I love the notion of a ‘book of regrets’ that exists and yet almost written in pencil), an engagement Nora ended but what if she hadn’t, a move across continents with her best friend she once said no to, a young man’s future without Nora as his piano teacher…to name a few.

Through each story, we are taken through the journey of how every single decision we make has a ripple effect and that in that ripple, we matter.

“We only need to be one person.
We only need to feel one existence.
We don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.” (The Midnight Library, Matt Haig)

As someone who coaches people on the dynamic timeline of goals because we as human are in fact so dynamic, the book highlights the uniqueness of one’s life and the choice(s) and decisions on how to live aligned to your truth. It is so deeply about trust, hope and curiosity - all facets I am also deeply exploring in life, too.

Ill leave you with this quote:

“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.” (Matt Haig, The Midnight Library.

Let me know if you read it! Definitely a great one for a book club!

Reminder to support your local bookstore if you want to live in a World with bookstores, I know I do!