[su_dropcap style=”light” size=”4″]T[/su_dropcap]he Midnight Library by Matt Haig is a wordy prescription to tell his readers about the gift called life and the beauty of being alive. The book celebrates life as a mixed bag – of the good and the bad, and Matt Haig shows that there isn’t anything like a perfect life, where everything is alright. And, in an imperfect life, what matters is the drive to keep going and be passionate about living; when you have that drive, you will realise the joy of “feeling alive”.
This idea makes for the crux of the book and is conveyed through the life of Nora Seed. Nora has lost her will to live for several reasons – a fairly long list of regrets of how she and her life “could have been”. This thought essentially propels Nora into a midnight library, a library between life and death, with shelves running endlessly. Each book is a possible life that Nora could get into and live. There are infinite lives to choose from and this hinges on the idea of parallel universes, with endless possibilities of the life that one could lead. The Midnight Library is managed by Mrs. Elm, the school librarian that Nora was attached to as a young child.
The reader follows Nora in and out of several lives as she picks and chooses them from among the shelves of the library, in a bid to undo her several regrets. There is no doubt that Matt Haig’s much-celebrated book has a very pertinent and beautiful message, and its narrative as such is racy, and told in short chapters, prompting one to keep turning the pages. Yet, I found the writing contrived, preachy and trying hard to explain everything. Further, the descriptions in certain places were unnecessarily loaded, making the process of reading these parts rather tedious for me. Nonetheless, there are certain parts in the story that sparkle because Matt Haig writes with great empathy and understanding of the human condition, especially when few important realisations dawn on Nora.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is, I would say, a good one-time read. And that, largely for the excellent message it conveys.