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A review by nisah_books
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
5.0
'In one life, I might be married. In another, I might be working in a shop. I might have said yes to this cute guy who asked me out for a coffee. In another I might be researching glaciers in the Arctic Circle. In another I might be an Olympic swimming champion. Who knows? Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.'
The Midnight Library tells the story of Nora Seed, a depressed woman who get multiple tries at various lives she has not lived, in parallel universes. In between life & death after a suicide attempt, Nora was somehow transported to a library of life - The Midnight Library - where she met an old acquaintance, a librarian called Mrs Elms, who encourages her to experience lives she had regretted not living, to imagine lives in which she would have loved to settle for; to live.
Reading this reminds me of The Road Not Taken, a poem by Robert Frost. Along the timeline of our lives, at least once, we must have wondered; what would our life be like if we had taken another road? The outcome might have been favourable or disagreeable; different, definitely yet not entirely. And if I were to travel back to that yellow wood where two roads diverged, where I had taken one, I would have taken another - or many others - just to eliminate the lingering what-if & it-would-be-great-if queries in my mind.
Regrets are a given, for life with all its fragility, monstrosity, wonder, beauty, confusion, unpredictability, good, bad and ugly - which may happen simultaneously - are not made to be fully understood by many. Yet it is through the act of living that we ultimately learn and eventually grant life with our own meaning.
The Midnight Library tells the story of Nora Seed, a depressed woman who get multiple tries at various lives she has not lived, in parallel universes. In between life & death after a suicide attempt, Nora was somehow transported to a library of life - The Midnight Library - where she met an old acquaintance, a librarian called Mrs Elms, who encourages her to experience lives she had regretted not living, to imagine lives in which she would have loved to settle for; to live.
Reading this reminds me of The Road Not Taken, a poem by Robert Frost. Along the timeline of our lives, at least once, we must have wondered; what would our life be like if we had taken another road? The outcome might have been favourable or disagreeable; different, definitely yet not entirely. And if I were to travel back to that yellow wood where two roads diverged, where I had taken one, I would have taken another - or many others - just to eliminate the lingering what-if & it-would-be-great-if queries in my mind.
Regrets are a given, for life with all its fragility, monstrosity, wonder, beauty, confusion, unpredictability, good, bad and ugly - which may happen simultaneously - are not made to be fully understood by many. Yet it is through the act of living that we ultimately learn and eventually grant life with our own meaning.