I have been going through a bit of a writer's block the last few months and I would say this book has lifted me out of it. Before the start of my sixth semester, during the Summer break, I had to complete a 20 day internship as a part of my coursework. I had applied for a few writing/editing internships but never really got a response. It was crushing. The fear of not being accepted is universal. So I am sure many would understand how those negative thoughts validated by rejection could be disorienting. Nothing I put on paper seemed right anymore. Still, I know it is absurd to expect positive responses on my first attempt, especially when I've only applied to a few places, maybe if I had kept applying I could have gotten in somewhere.
Since I was running out of time, I was willing to work with something I have no experience in, where the organization in question was willing to have me, which coincidentally, was a library. I liked it and disliked it at the same time. I liked how I could spend the entire day reorganizing bookshelves or working on making the new arrivals ready to be sent to each section. I disliked how alienated I felt as a student of English, constantly facing the inquiries of well-meaning librarians as to why I was there without a background in Library Sciences.
Often, I wished I had more time. Sometimes I wanted to jump into the worlds these books held all around me, constantly enticing me, only to realise I don't have the time to read them. Out of around 45 days of vacation, 20 went to the internship. It appears as though there is a lot of time left to read but honestly, it wasn't nearly enough to read everything I wanted to that vacation. Time. It felt like I was racing against it. It was an exhausting marathon. After completing my internship, aboard the train back to my college, I could finally catch my breath. That was when I picked up this book.
The Midnight Library written by Matt Haig is a brilliant book exploring themes of regret, grief, depression and suicide. He has encapsulated the feeling of hopelessness in the protagonist Nora Seed. Of how regret plays such a huge role in shaping our world view. The Midnight Library in this scenario gives one the chance to undo those regrets. A powerful concept. He mixes quantum physics, philosophy and lived experience to spin a tale that argues for life. Although this struggle is personal and differs from person to person, perhaps many could relate to Nora in her journey towards hope. If it worked to help change the perspective of at least one person, then I would say it has done its job. I can say it has for me. Especially considering it washed away the bitter aftertaste my experience with internships had left me with.
It is said that the first sentence of a book sets the tone for it and I must say Haig did so extremely well. This is how it goes, "Nineteen years before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat in the warmth of the small library at Hazeldene School in the town of Bedford." It is a striking sentence, a bold one. What caught my attention was the aspect of decision. An element of deliberation is necessary for decision making. It was a decision like every other that lead up to that moment and these decisions are the crux of the plot and what were unraveled in the course of this book.
The plot runs partially on the idea of quantum immortality. I believe the Kurzgesagt video I've linked at the end of this page will explain it better than I can. So check that out if you want to know more about it! It is a fascinating concept. The idea that there could be multiple versions of yourself. Even the death of one version does not truly kill you. However, it does not claim the transfer of consciousness from one version to another at the moment of death and this is why I say it's only partially dependent on this theory. That is also the brilliance of it. Haig sets up a world where it is possible to experience those other lives with the same consciousness as one had in the root life all to prove his point which we shall come to later. But first let's discuss the characters.
Nora Seed the protagonist is a 35 year old woman of many regrets. She suffers from depression and in her root life, she chooses to die when she feels that no one really needs her anymore, from not having attained a stable profession, to not having married her ex or gone with her friend to Australia, to being fired from her job for looking depressed, to her only student being removed from her piano lessons by his mother, to her elderly neighbor not needing her to pick up his medications anymore, and the final straw, her cat's death. She blames herself for everything and dreams of all she could have been "Swimmer. Musician. Philosopher. Spouse. Traveller. Glaciologist. Happy. Loved." (Haig 21)
Mrs. Elm is her school librarian. A person who consoled her when her father passed away. A comforting presence in a comforting place, her school library. This leads up to her manifestation as Nora's guide in the in-between. She is no ghost, which was my first assumption but no the real Mrs. Elm was still alive in her root life. The in-between is a place too confusing for the mortal brain to comprehend and so it simplifies things. In Nora's case it took the form of her old school library.
Now as she is given book after book; life after life, by Mrs. Elm she realizes that a lot of her regrets were futile. Her cat was going to die anyway and there was nothing she could have done about it. Even in the life where she was married to her ex who blamed her for his drinking problem she finds out she was not at fault. She goes into many professions that was expected of her but in each of them there was something that disappointed her. There was pain in every life.
One fun plot element is that she does not retain the memory of the life she enters until she settles into the life so there are scenes of comedic relief where she struggles in fields that she has no experience in and handling people whom she had not met in her root life. It did lead me to wonder how I would be in this situation. Probably no better than Nora. I laugh to think of myself fumbling around in a kitchen burning all the dishes and salting the tea.
Something I found interesting was that she stayed the longest in two lives. The one where she was a glaciologist and the other where she was a professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, researching Henry David Thoreau, her favorite philosopher. Thoreau, was also a naturalist. He saw science from a poet's perspective. Humanizing it. (Rocha) Nora writes poetry as well. In fact in one of her lives she goes on to be a world famous singer/songwriter. Thus her scientific temper and poetic nature converge in her willingness to be isolated in the arctic studying glaciers and what it means regarding climate change, for the environment and humanity itself. She seemed to be really taking after Thoreau himself. Yet she did not stay in the life of the scientist. Her real yearning was to be needed, that is in essence what she considered to be her purpose.
This is fulfilled in the final life she jumps into, in the life where she was researching Thoreau where she ends up married to someone who truly understands her. She had a child who needed her. She was happy. Yet she could not truly sink into that life. A part of her felt like she had not earned it. Thoreau in his poem Conscience epitomizes the transcendentalist idea of self-reliance. Of following instinct over societal norms. He talks of the simple life, of staying true to oneself. At that moment she was not being true to herself. Her regrets were mostly brought on by other people, social expectation of being married and having kids, it was her brother's dream of being in a band, her father's dream of being an athlete, Mrs. Elm's suggestion of being a glaciologist, all imposed on her. She was learning that none of that really fulfilled her. She had forgotten who she really was in her root life.
This is solidified when she finds out what the effect of her absence has done to the people in her root life. Her neighbor was admitted to a Care Home without her having brought medicines to him. She finds out her piano student was a troubled child and without her presence in his life to guide him in pursuit of music he turns into a delinquent of sorts. In a few of her previous lives she learns that it has also caused the closure of the place she worked at sooner than her root life. She was never unnecessary. Her yearning was already fulfilled. She just had not known it. This self-discovery made her want to live her real life. The simple life, where it seemed as though she had achieved nothing but where she had remained true to herself and in that sense, had everything.
An interesting quirk of the in-between is that one cannot enter the same life again. So I did wonder how the author would make sense of this. In that crucial moment, the library is falling apart because she does not want to live any of those other lives. She rushes to get to the book that is her root life. The book of her future. She struggles to find the right words, this primal, instinctive will to live was neither a mere decision nor a want. She had to realise that she is alive and upon writing that she is transported back to her root life. The rest is history.
I'd like to bring up one final thought. There appears to be three types of books in the library. The book of regrets, the innumerable books of her many lives and the book of her root life. The first two deal with her past and the final one with her future. The present itself is perhaps the library because time does not move in the library. Hopelessness can feel like being in a state of limbo, stuck, unable look up to a brighter tomorrow. Once Nora wanted to live she was no longer stuck. I find it beautiful how time started moving for her once she looked forward to her own future.
This brings me to how the author has used the theory of quantum immortality. In a world where we constantly wish we had done things differently, dream of fame and fortune and pleasing the people in our lives, we forget that even those versions of ourselves are bound to experience pain. Most importantly, all those versions of you are still you. They are your aspirations, they are endless possibilities of what you could have been, thus implying the endless possibilities of what you could be. It is a ripple effect, a web of decisions that affects not just your life but that of those around you. So there is no need to look down on your life, to cause yourself grief from social expectations. As long as you lead an earnest life, true to yourself, in harmony with nature as Thoreau would say, you'll be just fine. I find myself agreeing with him.
I am thankful to Prof. Samuel Rufus for gifting me this wonderful book, through which, like Mrs. Elm he has guided me to see the world in a new light. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who hasn't read it already. Before I go, I'd like to quote Nora who quotes Thoreau as such, "'Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,'... 'Live the life you've imagined.'" (Haig 17)
Conscience by Henry David Thoreau at Allpoetry.
https://allpoetry.com/poem/8503919-Conscience-by-Henry-David-Thoreau. Accessed
7 Aug. 2025.
Haig, Matt. The Midnight Library.
Canongate, 2020.
Rocha, Antonio Casado da. “Henry David
Thoreau and Scientific Culture.” Anglo Saxonica, vol. 17, no. 1, Jan.
2020. revista-anglo-saxonica.org, https://doi.org/10.5334/as.5.
***
Comments
Post a Comment