Review: The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Midnight Library is a book about what life could have been, about regrets that we carry, and how they weigh us down. The protagonist, Nora, just had a terrible day - her cat dies, she gets fired, then fired again, then let people down, is estranged from her remaining family - and this is on top of a pretty difficult and depressing life. It's too much, so she attempts suicide. In her near-death state, she arrives at the Midnight Library - a magical place in which each book is a different version of her life, and can pick a book and visit that life. If she finds one that she likes, she can leave hers behind and stay in this new life!

But this is not a story about possibilities - this is a story about depression.  Contrary to what it might seem from the blurbs and covers, it's not sci-fi, it's not fantasy, it's not fantastical realism - it's about depression.  The protagonist, Nora, is incredibly self-destructive - everything she does in life goes towards destroying her own happiness, every choice she makes is self-sabotage.  Whenever something is going well, she decides to stop it to favor something else, which she then will drop in order to favor something else, and so on.  She starts as an olympic-level swimmer in high school, but feels anxious about it, it's too much pressure - she drops it, and wants to study to be a glaciologist - that's her new dream.  She goes to Uni, then drops glaciology to do philosophy.  Then drops that to be in a band.  Then drops that to get married.  Then drops that because of anxiety.  She makes plans to move to another country, then drops that too.  Every time she drops something, it's for no good reason.

Then she finds the Midnight Library, which allows her to explore each possible choice she could have made in her life.  Right at the beginning of the book, you can feel that it is predictable predictable - you can guess that she is going to try to unravel the sequence of choices she made one by one, and find out that each one had its own challenges, so that the best choice is her original life in the end. But it starts poorly - she is so picky!  She starts trying out the life in which she was married, but she complains about how the guys laughs, his sense of humor, how much he was drinking tonight, even how loud he is washing his mouth - she picks him apart before even trying!  By the time we have a revelation (and find out that she has an actual good reason not to like her husband), it's already a moot point - she was already unhappy for all sorts of little details.  Remember "don't sweat the small stuff"?  She sweats all the small stuff all the time! There is always some reason why she can't be happy. And that's exactly how depression works. Interestingly, the protagonist mentions that she has been diagnosed with "situational depression" late in life, but we see from snippets of her past that she has struggled with depression and anxiety her entire life.

So yeah, it's about depression, from beginning to end.  However, perhaps strangely, that doesn't make the book depressive!  In fact, the writing is fantastic!  The visits to each one of her lives is very varied, with lots of slice-of-life glimpses, with a tiny bit of fantasy and sci-fi thrown in. Also, the final message might be cliched, but it is well delivered and powerful.

Finally, the narration is sooo good! Carey Mulligan was perfect, her voice, tone and accent were really nice to hear, and made the audiobook really enjoyable.

View all my reviews