Book Bearings
The Midnight Library
- 304 pages · about 5 hours
- First published 2020
- 27 editions
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1 About this book
Nora Seed has reached a breaking point. She finds herself in the Midnight Library, a place between life and death where the clocks have stopped at midnight and the shelves go on forever. Every book holds a version of her life as it would have been had she chosen differently, and the librarian, who was kind to her at school, explains that she may try any of them and stay if she finds one that fulfills her. Nora steps into one life after another, from the relationship she ended to the careers she gave up, to see whether any of them would truly have been better.
- Science fiction
- Fantasy
- Choice (Psychology)
- Future life
- Regret
- Libraries
- Decision making
- Literary fiction
2 What to expect
A gentle, accessible novel about regret: a woman between life and death tries out the lives she might have lived. It is episodic, moving quickly from one alternate life to the next, and more interested in feelings than in the mechanics of parallel worlds. The tone is warm and hopeful, sometimes simple in its lessons; it begins with a suicide attempt and deals with depression throughout.
Good for readers who want: a hopeful story about regret and second chances, light fantasy, and an easy read.
3 About Matt Haig
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Matt Haig
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