I just finished listening to The Midnight Library by Matt Haig on audiobook (read by the exquisite Carey Mulligan). As this is not a new novel, I know that many of you may have read it and certainly a lot has already been written or said about it. In any case, I wanted to record some of my thoughts on it. There are mild spoilers ahead so tread carefully if you want to read it.
It starts in a place of depression and darkness for the main character, Nora Seed. She decides she does not want to live anymore. However, instead of dying, she finds herself in a library with her old school librarian Mrs. Elm. The books on the shelves are all of her other lives, those that could have happened had one of an infinite number of simple decisions been made differently.
She has the opportunity to live in some of these other lives, dropping in at midnight to each of the new lives with no memories of being in that life before. As she stumbles through these lives, she finds herself being disappointed even though each one was a life she thought she wanted.
It is a book about regret and realising that regret is useless. Even if she had made certain choices – if she had become the rock star, or the glaciologist, or Olympic swimmer – it would not have been the solution to her problem. By living all of these alternative versions of herself, she came to like her root life much more. She came to like herself more.
It is tempting sometimes to wonder what would have been. What would have happened if I had never trained to be a teacher (would I like myself a bit more? or would I just not love literature as much as I now do)?
The title of the blog post is a quotation from the book and is one of many that jumped out to me. It is hugely comforting to me to remember that in order to be happy, complete, and at peace with ourselves, we don’t have to have done every possible thing.
The book ends in a place of hope and possibility which is, in my opinion, the happiest of all endings.
Notes From My Day 