The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is an interesting concept that is slightly irritating in its delivery. I’ve got nothing against Matt Haig. I quite liked The Radleys and found that an amusing page turner. Unfortunately Midnight Library wasn’t that for me.
It follows the life of Nora a young woman who is fed up with her life and considers suicide. To be fair she certainly has justification for that – her life sounds pretty dire at the start of the book. For some reason, and perhaps unfairly I see Tamsin Greig play her, if it’s ever dramatised. Perhaps it has been and I’ve missed it!
As Nora passes from life towards death, the mechanism of which isn’t entirely clear, she encounters an opportunity to consider her life, what really matters to her. She able to consider all the regrets she has and to try other lives that she may have had, had she taken another road at various points.
That in itself is the best idea in the book and I guess someone has done this before, though I’m not well enough read to know it.
Unfortunately, for me, and to a large extent Nora, her lives are not that thrilling. She’s able to fall out of the new life readily and quite soon I couldn’t care less what she decided to do.
The fact that she arrives in each life oblivious as to what’s going on, and having to try and find out pretty fast. It seems everyone around her in each of her new lives wonders if she’s having a nervous breakdown in each of them, as she responds in unusual ways, to them in what must be normal situations for everyone else, simply because she hasn’t a clue what’s going on.
If she wasn’t able to Google herself she’d be lost – oh the power of a phone to save one from ridicule, or being sectioned under the Mental Health Act!
I’ve possibly said too much here though the back of the book says pretty much as much. I won’t tell you the ending other than to say its just too twee and predictable.
My advice – don’t get too hung up on regrets. Face the future, make that better and certainly don’t waste a few hours reading this book.
ShaunOConnell.com 