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A review by ronpayne
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Did not finish book.
Right before DNFing this book at 61%. Instead of listening to the audiobook, I spent a half hour reading low rated reviews to see if this book pissed anyone off in the ways it pissed me off. And the answer is kinda. But yeah, that's not really good use of my time. And therefore continuing reading this isn't a good use of my time either.
To expand, here are some specific reasons I didn't like this book:
The unbelievably privileged main character - If she had only made different choices she could have been an Olympic champion, one of the leading Glaciologists in the world, or a rock star with millions of fans. How nice for her. But most people attempting to make the right choices towards those goals would likely not be able to achieve one, or any of these things. Her bounty of remarkable outcomes made her unrelatable, and frankly infuriating.
Unbearable Second Hand embarrassment - In each book she jumps into, she enters in medias res, with only her own memories and skill set, and then is asked to do something she doesn’t have the acquired abilities for. I guess this was meant to underscore the feeling of “wherever you go, there you are.” That's fine when she doesn't know how to be in a relationship with a shitty husband, or know where to go to work when she's a slacker bereft with grief. But being asked to go out on stage and give a motivational speech? Play the encore of a rock concert for a band she doesn’t know the songs for? As someone who deals with social anxiety, these scenes were agonizing for me to read!
It’s an unhealthy thought experiment for me - I have long ago come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t spend my life fantasizing about how my life would be different if I had made different choices, because in the end you can only use past decisions to inform future decisions as you move forward. That may be the entire point of the book. And if so, that may be good for some people to learn. But as someone who has already worked this out by spending too much time on just that kind of thinking, I don’t need a book prompting back me into those unhealthy thought processes.
To expand, here are some specific reasons I didn't like this book:
Unbearable Second Hand embarrassment - In each book she jumps into, she enters in medias res, with only her own memories and skill set, and then is asked to do something she doesn’t have the acquired abilities for. I guess this was meant to underscore the feeling of “wherever you go, there you are.” That's fine when she doesn't know how to be in a relationship with a shitty husband, or know where to go to work when she's a slacker bereft with grief. But being asked to go out on stage and give a motivational speech? Play the encore of a rock concert for a band she doesn’t know the songs for? As someone who deals with social anxiety, these scenes were agonizing for me to read!
It’s an unhealthy thought experiment for me - I have long ago come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t spend my life fantasizing about how my life would be different if I had made different choices, because in the end you can only use past decisions to inform future decisions as you move forward. That may be the entire point of the book. And if so, that may be good for some people to learn. But as someone who has already worked this out by spending too much time on just that kind of thinking, I don’t need a book prompting back me into those unhealthy thought processes.