With one hour before my local bookstore closed, I didn’t have a lot of time to comb through the list of books I’d saved in the past months. As I walked into the store, all I wanted was to buy a light-hearted fiction book. Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library caught my attention because of its prominent display by the entrance of the shop, and after reading the backs of a dozen other books, I concluded that none seemed quite as interesting.
I generally find myself graduating towards non-fiction books, but whenever I get the chance to change it up, I’m always reminded how much more entertaining and digestible fiction books are in comparison to their matter-of-fact counterparts.
After committing suicide, the book’s protagonist, Nora, is transported to an endless library where each book contains a different version of her former life. With the guidance of her elementary school librarian, who permanently resides in the library, she is able to live out each of those alternate lives to see how the different ‘what-ifs’ would’ve played out in the long run. The author does a great job of narrating how Nora acts in each of the lives she visits while also providing a lot of commentary on her mental journey and insights from each of the incredibly unique experiences.
Haig did a fantastic job of keeping the plot fresh; there were plenty of twists and turns along Nora’s journey and each of them made the book continually interesting. What starts off as an all-too-common sad story, ends up being a high-spirited adventure. With such an expansive concept, Haig could have taken this book in many different directions, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much he was able to accomplish in roughly three hundred pages. All aspects of the plot were resolved, and the concept of visiting & exiting lives never became stale.
My main critique of the book is that everything felt incredibly generic. Nora’s revelations, many of the lives she lived, and the ending were almost too predictable. It would’ve been interesting to see some more unforeseen plot twists, but the author chose to keep everything on a linear path. Perhaps I set my bar too high based on how much I had heard about The Midnight Library before deciding to read it but, with such an interesting plot concept, it felt like this book could’ve played out differently.
That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this read and finished it within a day of opening the cover. Given how few fiction books I’ve read, I’m having a hard time deciphering if I finished the book so quickly because of its engaging plot or because fiction tends to read faster than the biographies I usually read. While both are certainly factors at play, the latter seems to explain more of my pace. I have no regrets about reading this and enjoyed the insights into Nora’s life, but don’t realistically see myself revisiting this book or recommending it to any friends.
Rating: 3/5