Thursday, November 17, 2022

Mini-Review: Midnight Library by Matt Haig

 Yeah, I could have written full reviews for the books I've reviewed this week and gotten another week of reviews; but, if I put this off longer, I'll forget the books, let alone what I want to say about them. So here's another mini-review of a book I've read, and really enjoyed, recently. 

Midnight Library
by Matt Haig
304 pages
Published September 2020 by Penguin Publishing Group
Source: my public library

Publisher's Summary: 
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? 

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

My Thoughts: 
Recommended by a friend at work (thanks, Ann!), this is a book that really makes you think about the what ifs of your life, and there are so very many more what ifs than you ever considered. If you had a chance to see every single possible version of the life you might have led, which would you choose? Nora discovers that getting what you thought you wanted out of life isn't necessarily what you would have chosen had you known how it would have ended. 

I wasn't a fan of the ending of this one. I wish it had ended about six pages earlier, left the reader wondering. But there were some really great things in this book. 
"Nora had always had a problem accepting herself. From as far back as she could remember, she'd had the sense that she wasn't enough. Her parents, who both had their own insecurities had encouraged that idea. 

She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself complete. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lost or longing she had surpassed. 

She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. 

She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. 

And in doing so, she imagined what was like to be free." 

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