Ms. Hen reviews The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library

Matt Haig

Viking

2020

Ms. Hen decided to read this simply because it was recommended to her on Amazon. Sometimes she feels guilty buying books on Amazon, but she received a gift card for Administrative Professionals Day, and she wanted to buy things that interested her. This book piqued her interest.

This novel is about a thirty-five year old woman, Nora, whose life has turned upside down. Her cat dies, she loses her job, and her only piano student is stopping lessons with her. She has a lot of regrets in her life; she wishes she had ended up in a different place. She decides life is not worth living, and she swallows a bunch of pills. She ends up in a place called the Midnight Library, which is guarded by a woman who appears to be her school librarian, Mrs. Elm.

Mrs. Elm explains how the library works. A book called The Book of Regrets spells out each of Nora's regrets. Every other book is about a life Nora could have lived: the regret that she didn't marry her fiance, Dan, or one where she could have been a rock star, or one she was a glaciologist. Nora opens these books and is transported to her parallel lives where she made different choices.

This novel reminds Ms. Hen of a TV show from the 90s called SLIDERS, in which characters slid to parallel universes where something different in history happened. It also makes her think of a novel she read recently called FAMOUS MEN WHO NEVER LIVED by K Chess, about our world that has a parallel dimension where some characters get trapped in our dimension.

Ms. Hen thought this novel was fantastic, and she finished it very fast. She believes she is a hen who has lead many different parallel lives, and she relates to this character. She doesn't believe in regrets, however, because regrets only make a person bitter. She thinks the future is always in front of us.

Ms. Hen finished this novel on her porch on Saturday, which was a beautiful day where she lives, it was 72 degrees and sunny, the exact temperature of the Starship Enterprise, and when she was reading it she got very emotional. She was embarrassed that her neighbors might see her crying, so she held the book in front of her face as she was finishing it. She felt silly that she was ashamed, but it was that good! This book made her feel better about the world.

Ms. Hen loved this book, and she would recommend it to anyone. She might even read it again some day, which she doesn't do with most books. Nora went through a lot of other lives in different dimensions, but what she learned is it's the little things that you do that make a difference, and love is the most important part of life.