The Midnight Library: A Review
If you are given the chance to experience another life, would you stay alive?
Content warning: Suicide
Never underestimate the big importance of small things.
“Oh my God.”
That was my single intense reaction towards the end of the book. It might be because of the many mentioned geographical terms, the abundant reference of philosophy, the whole quantum physics concept that was frequently brought up, or the fact that this book has sparked a renewed desire to live the life that is happening in front of me right now.
As a book that has successfully got me out of my four years reading slump, I give this read a 4-star.
The whole story is based on Nora Seed’s unwillingness to live her regret-filled life and due to her buried desire and passion. The desperation she experiences led her to an escape: suicide. However, she didn’t die right away. She was given the chance to experience many other lives, in hopes of finding the right way to live.
‘You didn’t have to enjoy every aspect of each life to keep having the option to experience them. You just had to never give up on the idea that there would be a life somewhere that could be enjoyed.’ (pg. 211)
Matt Haig, the author, manages to easily deliver the story as well as the messages without making it difficult for the reader to process. He uses many analogies, such as chess and music, to describe the potential beauty of life he is trying to tell the readers.
From the perspective of someone who just started to drown herself in the world of literature again, this novel is very easy to read yet arouses many insights — the cliché ones and the extraordinary ones — in a way that is far from overwhelming. This doesn’t give the fun of a fantasy book, rather the peace of mind a poetry book would.
‘When you have worries about things you don’t know about, like the future, it’s a very good idea to remind yourself of the things you do know.’ (pg. 225)
I believe the endless possibility of the whole finding-the-perfect-life journey told in this book is what provides the anticipation to keep continuing the read, and I too believe that this is the main message Matt Haig wanted to tell; that life has endless possibility, and that we have to want to anticipate life.
The character development Nora Seed experiences is as well a thing to enjoy. Through her dialogue and behavior towards people around her — and her reality — it is noticeable that each different life she got to taste has impacted her within. And Matt Haig describes that with his words perfectly.
We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. (pg. 278)
A number of dialogues and paragraphs in this book triggered me to pause for some seconds to feel and think of what lies behind the surface, in addition to many quotable sentences that you have been seeing throughout this review.
I have taken a whole note of not only the key-takeaways from this book, but also the new vocabularies I learned and the general knowledge I discovered through this read. The page can be accessed here.
To put the value I’ve learned from this book into words, I’m going to emphasize the first ever sentence written in this article: Never underestimate the big importance of small things.
Everything matters, and everything doesn’t have to be big. Small actions and conscious decisions that we take each day is what’s most important. Most of the time, it’s the small things that has meaning, we just have to want to see it through and appreciate them. If the small things are not appreciated, the big things won’t really have meanings either.
Bonus take-away: Living someone else’s dream and expectation is not really living at all. Live your own life.
