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The midnight library (not a book review)
One of the best books I’ve read recently is The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig. Here is a short description:
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? In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
This, however, is not a book review. Rather, it’s about using Haig’s novel as a thought experiment to help us reflect on our own lives. Inevitably, this essay is going to read a bit like a personal memoir, so apologies in advance if you are not that interested in my life. But I invite you to try out the experiment and write…
