“It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective”
The above quote, for me, sums up my experience of reading The Midnight Library. I’m kicking myself for not listening to this on BBC Radio before Christmas, and reading it on New Year’s Day after a pretty miserable year by any standards lent it a certain poignancy that cannot be underestimated. We might all think about what might have been, and there are – undoubtedly – times when we might feel less than enamoured with what’s going on around us. At times this felt like A Christmas Carol for the modern reader – with the concept of the library and its alternate lives replacing the spirit guides. Whatever our response to the message, the reminder that how we perceive things can make a huge difference to our existence is an important one.
Our main character, Nora Seed, is a fairly ordinary character. Nothing particularly significant happens to her, but a series of unfortunate events in her life build up to her feeling that life is not worth living. She wants out. She chooses to die.
What she gets is the Midnight Library, a sort of magical portal capably overseen by the wonderful Mrs Elm, the librarian she recalls from school. Under Mrs Elm’s tutelage she learns that the library offers her the chance to try a new life. She can get to experience all the possibilities her life offered her.
We follow Nora as she becomes an Olympic swimmer, a rock star, a wife and mother, a drop-out, a pub owner. Each life offers something different. Each life was a possibility for Nora, had she made different choices. She tries many lives, but none feel quite right.
At a crucial moment, Nora comes to a startling realisation. There’s a chance things may not be quite right but she wants to live. She wants her life.
Quasi-scientific, magical in parts…and definitely the kind of thing I could see making a wonderful movie. This book will mean different things to each person who encounters it. For me, it offered escapism with a timely reminder to take the time to recognise the joy in the choices we have made and the lives we are leading. While things aren’t great, this might be tough. But it’s a sentiment I want very much to uphold.