Book Club March 2021- The Midnight Library

By: Matt Haig
Published Year: 2020
Publisher: Viking
Pages: 288

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Summary (Provided by Goodreads): Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?”

A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, from the internationally bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time.

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

What I thought

This month was picked by me. I had a friend who told me about this book and how much she enjoyed it and then after that it won Goodreads Choice for Best Fiction in 2020. Add that to the fact that the summary is right up my alley and I didn’t need any more convincing to pick this for book club.

Nora dies. Or well, she sort of dies. She ends up in the Midnight Library which is a place of possibility between life and death where every book there is a book of what your life could have been if you had made a different choice. Nora has to decide which life is the best fit for her, before all those possibilities are gone.

I am such a sucker for multiverse storylines. I love the idea of there being a different Lindsey on a different world who studied abroad in London, who went to NYU for grad school, who decided to live in a different apartment. So many endless possibilities of where your life could have ended up.

Haig does a wonderful job of dealing with this thought process. I liked Nora and watching her try on different lives. It’s one of those books that I don’t want to say too much about it because I don’t want to give anything away. What I can say is that while this book isn’t earth shattering and unpredictable, it deals with life and philosophy in a wonderful and beautiful way.

I don’t completely understand how this book got so hyped up though. It is a very well written book with a message I enjoyed, but I feel like I’ve read similar books that I’ve enjoyed just as much. I’m not saying it’s not a very good book, I’m just curious what it is about this one versus some of the others in a similar vein that caused this one to take off.

What Book Club Thought

Yay! Everybody enjoyed this one! And there was still enough to talk about because of the content, so it didn’t make it boring. We had some interesting discussions about what we thought was going to happen versus what did, how we would have felt like or done in her situation. I would definitely recommend this book, both as an individual read and as one for a book club. I will definitely look into more of Haig’s books in the future.