posted on 03 Jul 2023

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Matt Haig’s struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts are well documented and, along with a fascination with time and its working, have repeatedly found their way into his writing - both fiction and non-fiction. These two momentous issues sit right at the heart of one of Haig’s most lauded works of fiction, The Midnight Library.

Nora Seed’s life seems to have hit a full stop. She’s feeling estranged from her brother, her best friend is in Australia and isn’t replying to her messages and – to top it all – her cat has died. What is there to live for?

As Nora contemplates her suicide, she looks back on her life and the mountain of regrets she has. Would it all have been different if only she’d stuck with something – her music, her swimming, her boyfriend or her promise to move to Australia to study whales? She also remembers the only place she ever really felt happy, the school library where the librarian, Mrs Elm was her comfort when the news of her father’s sudden death came through.

Matt Haig tells Nora’s story in a plain, straightforward way, layering her miseries one on top of the other as he counts down the clock to her inevitable overdose of tablets. But, Nora is about to discover that what should have been her final act turns out to be far from it as she finds herself in the Midnight Library.

Suspended in time (it’s always midnight there) Nora wakes to find she is in a Borgesian never-ending library of books – all of which itemise the details of a life-path that she never took. It’s a library of possibilities and alternative decisions and she is being given the chance to try out some of those she thinks may lead her to the happiness she didn’t find in her ‘core’ existence. Conducting her through this eternity of possibilities is none other than her old librarian, Mrs Elm. 

We then follow Nora into a number of lives where she has a brief time to decide whether each one is the life for her – the place where she would be truly happy. Each time she enters an alternative world she has to adjust to the realities of a life she’s never lived and, it turns out, each one lets her down in one way or another.

Nora also discovers she’s not the only one in this odd state of transition – she meets Hugo who is also a soul on the search for the perfect alternative life, who describes the way there are many such ‘sliders’. The number of alternative lives that can be explored seems to depend on the state of the body in their core existence – if Nora’s life finally ends in the ‘real world’ the midnight library will collapse.

Haig doesn’t go in for complicated storylines and there’s no flirtations with ideas like magic realism or fractured narratives but he is playing with modern ideas like string theory, multiverses and quantum physics. Natasha Pulley, reviewing the book for The Guardian, notes that:

“The foundation of the idea is the many worlds theory, in which a new universe blossoms from every choice and decision. It’s a beautiful concept, but Matt Haig doesn’t explain it in any depth; his concern is the psychological effect that seeing all these versions has on Nora – and on her willingness, or unwillingness, to live.”

I don’t want to spell out the way the way Nora’s story plays out but I was quite disappointed with what felt like a rather conventional and overly-optimistic conclusion. The book is as much about a positive approach to the difficulties of mental ill-health as it is about complexity and in Natasha Pulley’s words, ‘the whole novel has the air of a skilful exercise designed to confront depression and anxiety.’

The book was first published in 2020 and copies can be found in paperback easily enough for under £10.

 

Terry Potter

June 2023