By: Matt Haig
Philosophical fiction
TW: Before you read this review, The Midnight Library contains suicide.
This book caught my attention from all of the hype it was getting. Almost everyone I worked with had read it, so obviously I had to read it too. I'm currently in the middle of moving, so I took the opportunity to try out a new system where I read the book in my free time and listened to the audiobook while I was busy, and I must say the audiobook made packing a breeze. Plus the narrator, Carey Mulligan, had such a captivating voice that fit the story perfectly I found myself flying through this book and finishing it within a day.
The book starts off introducing the main character, Nora Seed, and her last day before she makes the unfortunate choice to take her life at midnight. When she's making her attempt, time stops and she finds herself in a deep library with the books being every possible life she could have every lived and every outcome to any choices she did, and didn't, make. She gets a chance to glimpse into the lives she could have had, and making her realize what she did have.
While talking to a coworker the day after I finished the book, we came to an agreement that Matt Haig, who suffers from depression and anxiety disorder, wrote the book to celebrate living and make you as the reader realize that your life can be built by the choices you make and the drive to keep going, even when sometimes it feels as if you can't.
Matt Haig is also the author of many self help books, his most popular one called Reasons to Stay Alive also explore the importance to overcome what feels impossible. Mr, Haig also just came out with a new book called The Comfort Book with short stories that enlighten the way you see yourself and the world around you.
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