“The Midnight Library“ by Matt Haig
Reading time: 5 minutes
The aim of this short article is to encourage the reading of this book and not to replace it. If you decide to purchase it through our affiliate link, we’ll get a few pence in our bank account and you’ll get a big thank you!
The Book Oversimplified
The Midnight Library is the story of Nora, a 35-year-old woman who decides to kill herself. Instead of dying, she ends up in the “Midnight Library,” a place between life and death where she gets to experience every potential life she could have lived. After many snippets of alternative existences, she discovers that the only life she’d rather live is her own, because it’s not life itself to be good or bad; all that matters is perspective.
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Quotes
“Doing one thing differently is often the same as doing everything differently.”
“A person was like a city. You couldn't let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole.”
“You don't have to understand life. You just have to live it.”
Photo by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash
A Review Through Takeaways
Let’s be clear about one thing: Matt Haig is not going to win the Nobel Prize for this novel, but it doesn’t matter, does it?
“The Midnight Library” has been (and still is, at the time of writing this article) stupidly successful all around the globe, and for an excellent reason. It’s sweet, it’s real, it’s magical, it’s an easy read (in the best possible meaning of the term; the author himself says that it’s so hard writing a book easy to read) and it’s full of hope. In an overly complex world, people seek simplicity, and Matt Haig passes an extremely simple concept through the most intricate of problems: mental health. We can all learn from it, writers and non.
1. The perfect sentence is not (always) required.
Disclaimer: if you’re trying to write the next great British—or American, or whatever—novel, or if your end goal is becoming a Nobel laureate, ignore this section.
There is a big value in gestating and pushing out a creative project as quickly as possible (more on this concept here). I’m not suggesting that this is what Matt Haig did, but we can fairly assume he didn’t spend the last 5 years perfecting his manuscript, and I’m grateful for that. To be honest, there are a few bits of the book I didn’t particularly enjoy, especially at the beginning. I wasn’t that engaged reading the soul-crushing first chapters; I didn’t even care about the dead cat, and I was a little disappointed by the dialogues. None of this matters, though. The book’s power comes from its natural development, and everything, EVERYTHING in the story is relatable, even if you’ve never experienced depression in your life. The ending is quite moving, because you really feel like someone who’s been in a dark place and has emerged stronger, wiser, happier, more attentive to their surroundings, and Nora embodies wonderfully this rebirth by simply being happy for her brother.
For something to work perfectly, it doesn’t have to be perfect.
2. Fiction focused around a single concept has a powerful appeal
I would put this book in the same sub-genre as “The Alchemist,” although I liked this one better. (De gustibus non est disputandum.) What I mean is that the entire novel revolves around the same concept in the form of a revelation/discovery. While normally for genre fiction, a single idea is not enough (ask Brandon Sanderson about it), this branch of fiction works solely with a unique idea as the engine of the story.
The main reason Matt is so successful at doing this, in my opinion, is that during all of Nora’s adventures, nothing goes drastically wrong. The planet is not about to explode; there was no fire killing all the people she cared about and there was no way she could have saved her cat. She simply wasn’t happy in any circumstance; that’s the beauty of it. On the surface, “The Midnight Library” is a fantastical tale about a supernatural library where every book is a potential life and all you have to do to live them is reading the first page. On a deeper level, “The Midnight Library” is a book about how to face adversities and how to be content with our choices.
3. Everything’s going to be alright
Have you ever thought that, if only you had made a different choice, if only you had pursued that adventurous career, if only you didn’t leave your band or your football team, if only you didn’t break up with that person in college, you would have been happier now? Well, if you can take away just one lesson from this book, don’t. External circumstances are not the key driver of your happiness. You are. As Matt himself likes to repeat:
“The sky isn’t more beautiful if you have perfect skin. Music doesn’t sound more interesting if you have a six-pack. Dogs aren’t better company if you’re famous. Pizza tastes good regardless of your status. The best of life exists beyond everything we are meant to feel bad about lacking.”
And there is much more. Those are only a few of the lessons I’ll try to bring with me in my daily life.
Do one thing differently, the results can be surprising.
When everything seems to go badly, focus on the good, focus on the good you do to other people, on the effect you have on them. It will get better, just give it time.
Be grateful for what you have and don’t bother regretting what you haven’t done in the past. You can do it tomorrow.
You don’t have to experience everything to feel everything.
Many of the things that make you happy, really happy, will not depend on your income, or job, or location.
The Midnight Library might not be the best book ever written, but it is the book we need right now.
Alla Prossima
Conclusion: 8/10
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