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greymalkin 's review for:
The Midnight Library
by Matt Haig
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I wanted to like this book more but I just didn't really connect with the story or the main character, which is a problem because that's pretty much the entirety of the book. Also the message of the book is so appallingly tin-eared that this must not have had any sensitivity readers or beta-read by anyone who has ever dealt with mental illness and addiction. It is competently written and I do appreciate the details, but...
...it felt like the message/desired ending was clear from pretty much the first few chapters and then it was just wading through tons of repeats where the message gets hammered in again and again and again and again... it grew a bit tiresome. Okay yes, she needs to regret trying to commit suicide and choose her life. I get that that's what you want, author Haig. Good gracious. I think Haig was trying to recreate for the reader the beaten-down exhaustion and numbness of the main character by sheer repetition. Good job, you succeeded.
The meta mechanics also got muddled, where the various lives were so different it felt like just a bunch of short stories. There was no sense that this was happening to fundamentally the same person (didn't help that the main character had so little actual personality that I wouldn't be able to tell who she was if the book wasn't narrated from her PoV). There was no through-line of "this sort of experience/choice/event keeps happening no matter how other things changed", or even that there were always certain personality traits that carried through and informed her choices. There was no sense of organization, of following a branch of choices or exploring and learning from these alternates. It was just chaotic jumping around, which makes any "life lesson" difficult to portray with any subtlety.
I would guess that this alternate-life device is what people like about this book. Because who doesn't speculate on how their lives might be different if they made different choices? That's what I thought this book was about and I love that kind of book generally. I love how this device can show how small choices make big effects, or how different circumstances can get at the basic truths of a character or moment. But no, this book did neither.
Even worse, because her "original" life needed to be the one to choose, all the other lives had to suck/be unsatisfactory in some way. And the ones that didn't, had to feel like "not hers" or like "she didn't deserve them".
Which is total shit and gets into the mental health issue that is the most troubling part of this. I had been bothered by the basic set up of the book but didn't really understand what exactly it was about it that bothered me until I discussed this book with another person. They helped me realize that it was the author's attitude toward depression and mental health. The book claims that you can get over suicidal thoughts and depression by simply learning that the alternate lives you could have are worse or simply not for you. And that anti-depressants essentially do nothing except make you feel numb. Basically if you just cheered up and were more grateful, you would realize that your life was fine. NO.
And the whole suicide plotline wasn't necessary. As that person suggested, if the entire topic of suicide was removed and she'd simply been in a car accident or suffered a heart attack (or basically died the way the other lives ended), it would have changed the framing and actually helped make some of the alternate lives feel more substantial. Rather than a deliberate action by the character in a deep depression with no safety net, death happened by random chance. Why not make this more like Groundhog Day than Christmas Carol/It's A Wonderful Life? That would have been MUCH more interesting, to see her build a true sense of self without the weight of having to keep coming back to "and so now are you so much more depressed about your alternate lives that you are not so depressed about your OG life and don't want to kill yourself anymore? No? Okay try another one until you do". Watching her figure out what she always would do (and what she would never do) would tell me about her but there was no consistency in her decision making in her alternate lives. She just arbitrarily picked things. Even now I have no idea what her actual personality would be like other than "passive and dissatisfied". I was looking forward to learning what she truly loved (music? science? family?) but instead got "all you need to do is to not kill yourself". It wasn't even that she learned to love herself or love life. She just learned to fear death. Sigh. There was the potential to say something deeper about the commonality of human experience or the way pain and joy and love and hate can manifest. But it was squandered.
Also, the book destroys a library and burns books. Insult to injury.
The meta mechanics also got muddled, where the various lives were so different it felt like just a bunch of short stories. There was no sense that this was happening to fundamentally the same person (didn't help that the main character had so little actual personality that I wouldn't be able to tell who she was if the book wasn't narrated from her PoV). There was no through-line of "this sort of experience/choice/event keeps happening no matter how other things changed", or even that there were always certain personality traits that carried through and informed her choices. There was no sense of organization, of following a branch of choices or exploring and learning from these alternates. It was just chaotic jumping around, which makes any "life lesson" difficult to portray with any subtlety.
I would guess that this alternate-life device is what people like about this book. Because who doesn't speculate on how their lives might be different if they made different choices? That's what I thought this book was about and I love that kind of book generally. I love how this device can show how small choices make big effects, or how different circumstances can get at the basic truths of a character or moment. But no, this book did neither.
Even worse, because her "original" life needed to be the one to choose, all the other lives had to suck/be unsatisfactory in some way. And the ones that didn't, had to feel like "not hers" or like "she didn't deserve them".
Which is total shit and gets into the mental health issue that is the most troubling part of this. I had been bothered by the basic set up of the book but didn't really understand what exactly it was about it that bothered me until I discussed this book with another person. They helped me realize that it was the author's attitude toward depression and mental health. The book claims that you can get over suicidal thoughts and depression by simply learning that the alternate lives you could have are worse or simply not for you. And that anti-depressants essentially do nothing except make you feel numb. Basically if you just cheered up and were more grateful, you would realize that your life was fine. NO.
And the whole suicide plotline wasn't necessary. As that person suggested, if the entire topic of suicide was removed and she'd simply been in a car accident or suffered a heart attack (or basically died the way the other lives ended), it would have changed the framing and actually helped make some of the alternate lives feel more substantial. Rather than a deliberate action by the character in a deep depression with no safety net, death happened by random chance. Why not make this more like Groundhog Day than Christmas Carol/It's A Wonderful Life? That would have been MUCH more interesting, to see her build a true sense of self without the weight of having to keep coming back to "and so now are you so much more depressed about your alternate lives that you are not so depressed about your OG life and don't want to kill yourself anymore? No? Okay try another one until you do". Watching her figure out what she always would do (and what she would never do) would tell me about her but there was no consistency in her decision making in her alternate lives. She just arbitrarily picked things. Even now I have no idea what her actual personality would be like other than "passive and dissatisfied". I was looking forward to learning what she truly loved (music? science? family?) but instead got "all you need to do is to not kill yourself". It wasn't even that she learned to love herself or love life. She just learned to fear death. Sigh. There was the potential to say something deeper about the commonality of human experience or the way pain and joy and love and hate can manifest. But it was squandered.
Also, the book destroys a library and burns books. Insult to injury.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Animal death, Death, Death of parent, Abandonment