Even though Christmas is never even mentioned in The Midnight Library, I think it is a great book to read this season as it has such a feeling of redemption, hope and the chance to start over. All three fables have central characters who have given up on life, yet given a chance to see their life in a new way through metaphysical means. Both old favourites of mine and if you too like those, you’ll love this. I also loved the nod to two great Christmas stories namely the film, It’s a Wonderful Life and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. If ever we needed a metaphor for the idea that books can change lives, perhaps this book about a virtual library is it. It is the regret itself.” The novel helps us make sense of our own paths not taken and dreams unrealised, posing the idea that perhaps in letting go of the regrets, the life we are living now can become the one we want it to be. As Nora says: “It is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It’s the sort of book that makes us ponder our own life and regrets. In doing so, can she discover a life more fulfilling than the one she wants to leave? What would have happened if she stayed with her ex? If she’d followed a different career as a climate change expert? Or an Olympic swimmer? A member of a famous band? She even tries a few lives on she’s never even considered.
She gets the chance to try any or all of these lives on. Here, the books are all potential un-lived lives as well her own Book of Regrets. In Matt Haig's wonderful new book The Midnight Library we follow the predicament of Nora Seed who, coming to the end of her rope, feels the only way forward is to attempt to end her life, but finds herself in the library of the title, a place between life and death.
Perhaps it takes a clever author with their own mental health issues to write such a heartfelt yet entertaining novel about depression.
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