The First Book to Make Me Cry
Matt Haig’s, ‘The Midnight Library,’ was the first novel in my 18 years to bring me to tears.
Books are made to make us feel something; to transport us out of reality and into a whole new world, at least for a little while. Matt Haig’s latest novel, The Midnight Library, does just that and so much more.
Now, I’m a crier, I’ve always admitted it, but my crying has always been exclusive to music, films, and situations. Never have I cried at a novel. Well, up until about three days ago. I flicked through the penultimate chapters, bawling my eyes out.
I was so shocked to find this book hit me quite so much, but I wanted to share my thoughts on what I think is one of the most stunning books I’ve read in a long, long time.
[TW: sensitive topics such as suicide, self-harm, depression and alcoholism are mentioned in the text and are likely to be mentioned in this piece. Please click off now if you think any of the above will trigger you]
Synopsis from Goodreads
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 be truly better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting new 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.
Life’s Endless Possibilities
Sounds like a classic piece of YA fiction, right? The protagonist goes on an immense journey just to learn what they already knew, but needed an extra push to get there? I thought that at first, but in hindsight, I wish I’d not been so cynical; there are so many feelings to be felt.
From the get-go, we’re able to establish that everything in Nora Seed’s life is going wrong. Her cat’s dead, her brother seemingly wants nothing to do with her, and she’s just lost her job. On this particularly not-okay day, Nora decides to take her own life.
But the clock strikes twelve. Nora finds herself “in-between life and death” — purgatory, essentially. Except, it doesn’t look like the place of state or suffering depicted in the Bible. Nora’s purgatory takes the form of a library, her childhood place of comfort. Greeted by ‘Mrs Elm,’ the old school librarian, Nora expresses her confusion. She wanted to die, so why is she still somewhat alive?
Second chances. Or infinite chances, if you rather.
We all have regrets, right? It’s human nature to live life by “what-if’s.” What if I’d taken that job offer? Or not texted them back? Would my life be like this if I’d changed one-minute decision all those years ago? Of course, everything could be different, but there’s no way to change it. Unless?…
Nora is given the chance to undo every regret she’d ever had. The possibilities were endless. All she needed to do was decide on the life she wanted to live, and begin reading the correlating story. She becomes a geologist, a rock-star, an Olympic swimmer; a mother, wife, lover. In some, her brother was nowhere to be seen; in others he was her tour manager, an alcoholic, struggling with his own life. Thousands of paths are explored, and each time she ends up back in the library. No ‘new life’ was making her any happier.
Having given up almost all hope, Nora still didn’t want to be alive. Mrs Elm pushed her. “One more life.”
Nora is a philosopher. A mother to a little girl. Married to the cute guy who asked her out for coffee once. She’s close with her brother and his husband. Everything is extremely mundane; at the same time, it was everything she’d been looking for. She feels happy, and everything is perfect — almost too good to be true.
This is where I started crying. You might want to grab a box of tissues.
She feels disappointed. No, how can she?! She’s happy! Goddamnit, she’s happy! But no, she feels herself fade. Back in the library once again, Nora demands to go back to the life she’d just come from, having found what she believed to be utter happiness. She didn’t want to die anymore. She’d realised the potential life could have.
The systems were failing, the library began to crumble. The clock started ticking again. It was up to Nora to get herself out of there. Alive or dead? Nora’s story is completely up to her now.
She finds a blank book. She’s armed with a fountain pen. Nora has seconds to decide what to do next.
“I AM ALIVE,” she writes, and everything fades to black. Nora chose life.
The Story of a Lifetime
They say the right book finds you at the right time. I said at the start of this post that books place you into the world you’re reading about. I felt myself resonating with Nora’s story more than I probably would’ve liked to.
Depression and anxiety are awful mental illnesses. I, much like Nora Seed, have struggled with my mental health over the years; sometimes even to the point of suicide. It really is a rubbish feeling, is feeling useless. I’m 18, Nora is 35; we both have so much potential in life.
Haig’s writing is so skilful and confronts depression and anxiety in a beautiful, yet stylistically simplistic, way; there aren’t a hundred and one characters, the plot isn’t over-complicated. It’s just Nora and her library of lives.
Matt Haig shows us that no life is ever perfect, but that you don’t need money, fame, or success to give it intrinsic value.
A fictional character made me realise that life is worth living, and it’s completely what you make of it — “the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective.” Sometimes being shown everything you could have makes you realise that what you’ve already got is everything you need.
If you’re to read one book this month, this year: make it The Midnight Library. Heartbreaking and eye-opening in equal measure, it’s the story of a lifetime.
“Sometimes the only way to learn is to live.”
