Between life and death there is a library.
When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.
The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren’t always what she imagined they’d be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger. Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?
Genre: Fiction/ Modern & Contemporary Fiction
Number of Pages: 304 pages
Date of Publication: 2020
Author/Illustrator/Publisher:
The author is Matt Haig who also wrote Reasons to Stay Alive and Notes on a Nervous Planet as well as six other highly acclaim novels for adults.
The publisher is Canongate Books Ltd
Rating: 5/5
Review:
I absolutely loved this book. It does contain very important and heavy topics like mental health and depression which maybe is not a topic that everyone would like to read about but I loved it. Nora, who is the main character, was well written and the descriptions of the places and situations were very vivid and imaginative. I loved how well every single situation was well crafted and how Matt Haig managed to include philosophy blended into his book without risking the reader losing the thread of the plot. In the story Nora travels to the Midnight Library where she meets her old school librarian who shows her a book that belongs to Nora and where all her regrets are written. She then is transported through the books to different lives that Nora could have lived had she made different choices. During these travels Nora is able to see her life from different perspectives and experience different possibilities and even though she doesn’t realise at the time she is learning from each of them.
There are so many great messages in the story but for me the one that stood out was about the necessity to stop worrying about other people’s approval which a lot of us struggle with. ‘You don’t have to understand life; you just have to live’. It also makes you value the people around you and not to always just see value what people bring into our lives but how we can have an impact on other people.
It is such a moving book which made me think about certain aspects of my own life but also reminded me that life is full of opportunities and that sometimes I do need to see life from a different perspective. It is not often that I read a book that I know I will be reading again soon.
A perfect read which will inspire you to live and to see situations from a different perspective.
Availability: The book is available in all good bookshops.
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