The Midnight Library

There was so much talk and love for this book, I had to read it. Fortunately, the good folks at Two Book Nerds Talking sent their Patreon supporters an ARC copy each, and this winged its way to me.

First off: I am not a fan of fables. I read The Alchemist and few other titles some time back, and found them to be too cryptic as well as contrived to be able to derive much pleasure out of the reading of them.

Fortunately, this book strikes a more grounded note - the lead character, Nora Seed, is at the lowest point of her life, and at the moment when despair overwhelms her, she is transported to a magical library where it is constantly midnight and where the books show her different paths her life could have taken. With the guidance of Mrs Elm, the librarian (who happens to be her grade-school librarian in real life), Nora gets to review her regrets, undo them, and experience how her life Might Have Been if her decisions had been different.

I shall be honest, it took awhile for me to fully settle into this book - the episodes of Nora in the library with Mrs Elm were the ones I was most impatient with. At first. But the story is compelling, telling as it is of a young woman's feelings of failure, loneliness, and abject despair, and the revelations she needed to find out herself to slowly pick her way out of the emotional abyss.

It is also interesting - how many of us often wonder “What If?” - through Nora Seed, we get to explore the consequences of those What Ifs. Yes, they are Nora's but they serve to remind readers as well that each decision has a consequence and what might have seemed like a path in the road leading to much greener grass could very well have been another wrong turn. The book is not all gloom; Nora's various experiences - as a rock star, an Arctic explorer, a Mom, a bar owner, and some other roles in between - have their fun moments, ultimately serving to emphasize the story's central message: that no life is perfect but that's no reason to give up on it.

This is the ideal read if you need a pick me up but dislike non-fiction prescriptive writing, or if you simply need to nestle into a story that you know will ultimately lead you - gently and persuasively - out of the dark and into some sunshine.