Book - The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

I was sent this book as a late Christmas present from a colleague I’ve recently started to work with. It was a complete surprise, made especially nice as it arrived after the event in January. It is a book that of course, I have seen but had never picked up.

From the opening pages, I realise it’s set in my home town of Bedford so there was a shriek of excitement. I don’t think the sender knew. How come no one told me this? I looked it up and the author’s from Yorkshire; maybe he has a connection to the town. Maybe he just picked Bedford so the story didn’t accidentally connect with someone he knows.

Midnight Library is about regrets. Nora feels alienated in a world where she has lost both parents and her only family, her brother, doesn’t talk to her. When she loses her job too, Nora feels she is not needed. To write a novel around suicide is unsurprising when you know the author also wrote ‘Reasons to Stay Alive’. Nora hits rock bottom but instead of disappearing as expected, she lands in the midnight library where guided by her former school librarian, she is asked to work through how life would have been if she had made one of the hundreds of decisions she now regrets not making.

What would have happened if she went to live in Australia with her best friend instead of staying back to marry her boyfriend who wants to run a country pub. What if she goes ahead and marries him? What if she stuck with her childhood dream or with what her dad, who is stuck in a teaching job, wanted for her. She seemed to be unfathomably famous or uber-successful in many of her other decisions, but it is a fantasy book. So many lives seemed to be idyllic until she finds one thing wrong. Nora seemed to be searching for unattainable perfection. Or was it to do with sibling rivalry or parental favouritism.

The Midnight Library It’s a lesson in that you cant always change outcomes no matter which decision you made; because I think we always regret the things we don't do, rather than what we do.

It’s interesting to see a male write in a woman’s first voice so successfully. I noticed a couple of errors, not that it matters, it’s fiction and Uber can work differently in a fantasy novel. However, do we still have Office Clerks in the 21st century? 

I've never thought about living anyone else's dreams as I have so many of my own so I found that theory a bit strange. I’m glad I picked this up almost as soon as I received it, bypassing the 3 large to-be-read piles that contain books bought years ago, as its minute chapters made it the super easy, quick read I hoped. And what’s brilliant about the Midnight Library is that you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to say that about a book about suicide. 

Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close tight

Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you.

Looking forward to the film.