The Midnight Library: Book Review

*TRIGGER WARNING: DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE*

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig won the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction 2020.

📚 TL;DR: Heartwarming and satisfying quick read about life purpose, but don’t expect Hemingway-level prose or depth!

📚 Genre: Fiction (Sci-Fi Novel)

📚 Difficulty: Light Read

📚 Themes: Depression, suicide, purpose

📚 Plot: Nora loses all purpose for life and decides to take matters into her own hands one night. Instead of immediately passing away, she enters a limbo state called “the midnight library”, where she’s presented with a collection of books detailing what her life could have been if she had taken different paths.

📚 Review: I have mixed feelings about this book. While it wasn’t particularly well-written, the concept and message were adorable.

To be frank, it was very difficult for me to get into this book until about 70% in. The plot moves by repeating the same experience over and over in different contexts, making the book feel like it’s moving in circles instead of moving forward. Similarly, the chapters are also really choppy, fragmented and cut off at strange points. It’s written in very plain language reminiscent of young adult fiction, making it probably one of the easiest reads ever, but also kind of unsatisfying.

Haig makes some decent observations about depression and you will find some quotable lines (Example: “Maybe that’s what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty.”), but they don’t make up the majority of the book.

However, this is not to say I totally don’t recommend the book. The end is really satisfying and warm fuzzies-inducing. It definitely made me reflect on my own life and how easily I regret my circumstances. Like Nora, I spend so much of my life regretting my past decisions and fantasising how perfect my life would be had I “just done that”, and this book made me realise there is no perfect alternate reality. As much as this book wasn’t groundbreaking literature, I find myself thinking about its key message a lot, and maybe that’s all that really matters!

📚 Recommend to: People who are feeling down for purpose and struggling with meaning!