The Midnight Library by Matt Haig: Did you know how many people suicide and end their life? Do you know why they do so? Because of the regret and the emotional pain they feel from their life. They think that ending their life is better than finding a solution to their problem. The only thing you need to do is to understand the opportunity. The book I am reviewing this time is The Midnight Library which tells you about suicide from beginning to end and the instances of struggles, and the second change the characters get in the story.
We have two lives and the second begins when we realize we have only one.
Confucius
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is about a woman who lives a boring, ordinary life and feels useless and unfulfilled within herself. One night her mental pain reaches a peak. She regrets all the mistakes she has made in her life and kills herself. She finds herself between life and death, wakes up in a library, the Midnight library full of books, shelves go on with endless books wherever she goes. Each of the books on the shelves contains different lives in which she can choose the version she likes and insert herself into that life and continue to live again.
The novel is about life, how we regret things, and the choices we get to make in our life. We are working out to be happy in the life we have chosen for. In all the regrets, we lose the opportunity for success and happiness. As I mentioned in the Quote before, we only have one life, but the only thing that makes a difference is when we realize it.
I will not give you any spoilers here; I will provide you with a book summary. So for knowing more exciting content about the book, go ahead and scroll down.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig | Book Review
About the Author | Overview
Matt Haig
Matt Haig is an English novelist and journalist. Born on 3 July 1975 in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, he grew up in Newark, Nottinghamshire, and lived in New York. He studied History and English at the University of Hull. After managing his own internet marketing company and working for a nightclub in Spain, he became a full-time writer.
Matt Haig is the writer of both fiction and nonfiction books and novels for children and adults, often in the speculative fiction genre. His book Midnight library was adapted for radio and broadcast in ten episodes on BBC Radio 4 in Dec 2020. Viking published the book in 2020.
The Midnight Library | Overview
The book The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is a philosophical fictional Novel officially published on 29 September 2020. The book talks about the Meaning of life, the point of existence, the second chance, our purpose, suicide, and many more, which you will find when you read. The book was shortlisted for the year’s 2021 British Book Awards ” fiction book and GoodReads literary fiction best reads of 2020 award. The novel is currently in the top 10 Sunday Times bestseller list and selected as New York Times’ top 10 books.
The main character in this Novel—Nora seed, a 35-year-old woman from Bedford, England, is a central character of the Midnight library. Nora is smart and talented, but she struggled in the book under immense pressure with all the regrets she had with her life and with oppressive expectations of her loved ones. By the end of her 30s, she found herself struggling. She was suicidal and ended up in a situation between life and death.
The Midnight Library is a library; it’s a very out-of-this-world kind of library that doesn’t exist in real life because it goes on forever with an infinite number of bookshelves. Every book in this library provides a chance to try another life one can live.
The Summary of the Book The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The novel starts with a woman named Nora seed, who finds herself on the edge of making terrible choices. She loses her job, her brother, and her best friend. Her relationship is in total disorder, and her cat is dead. She is suffering from all the mistakes she made in her life. She is deeply unstable and can’t imagine a day that will be better than others. Her life has even become worse.
She is feeling hopeless and decided to end her life. She ends up waking up in the library, where the bookshelves go on for eternity, and every book on the shelf is a different version of Nora’s own life. She can flash into other lives and recognize which is best for her.
She does this over and over, desperately searching for the life that fits just right for her. She sees a woman and recognizes that the woman is her school librarian. Librarian told her that every book on the shelves has a different version of her life. Nora, full of regret, feels that now she has a chance to see how her life could have been.
She has not read her life, but she opens the book and falls into life, recognizing that all the things she could have been like an Olympic swimmer like a glaciologist in the arctic circle like a rock star. Now she has a chance to make real or rather to inhabit the lives which already are real but in the universe.
So what would Nora’s life have been like if she hadn’t given up music, and what about if she had not married that guy? She searches within herself as she travels in the Midnight Library and finds out what genuinely satisfies her life.
As she finds herself between life and death at the end of the book, she calls out to the universe to keep her alive. And finally, she wakes up gulping.
What to Take Away from the Book?
The novel is well written in simple concepts that compel readers to read more. The authors show so many different emotional experiences in life and enrich life lessons. Also, discuss an important topic like mental health, personal growth, and a good description of depression and anxiety as Nora travels through her life with the Midnight library.
Along with Nora, we learn many viable lessons like what is truly valuable and what makes life worth living rather than sadness and the hard times. The idea of a place between life and death, where you can revisit all your past decisions or your past life and get a chance to make something from whatever is available. The book teaches what would have led you down and how your life might look if you had made different choices in life.
My Thoughts on the Book The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The Midnight library opens up with different versions of Nora’s life. Imagine that in your life, you have made so many decisions. You would have taken many roads to what is good for you and what’s not. If you have made one different choice, it could just change the entire journey of your life.
Your every decision has the power to change your life. Still, the emotions of the book are about all the different choices we get to make in life would result in life which we think going to be great sometimes they aren’t so not worrying about the options we didn’t get to make what is important is that living best of you life. In reality, you didn’t get another chance that this book shows you. You will get a second chance when you realize that there’s only one.
Rating of the Book The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The book The Midnight Library by Matt Haig deserves 4.5/5 stars from me.
Conclusion & Recommendation | The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
I would highly recommend The Midnight library to anyone interested in finding their true potential. The read will compel you to indulge in thinking about what your life shows. You can say it’s a fictional self-help book, the people who know that regretting things is not the answer to problems. The problem itself has its solution in it. It’s up to you if you want to live your life to the fullest. Happy reading!
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