We’ve all stopped and pondered the consequences of decisions made – both macro and micro – wondering whether we’d be more content if only X had happened, or if one hadn’t let go of a friend at a certain point in time. Looking back is the nature of the beast when it comes to depression. This idea – the ability to rewrite decisions made – is what unites depressives.

Nora can pick as many books as she wants, experiencing these separate realities, hopping across lives that have been and could be, before being offered the option to settle into a satisfactory, preferable life. In short, she’s offered another chance at life by the librarian of the Midnight Library. A library packed full of her life experiences in books, all branching into various future realities depending on the decisions she made. Upon death, Nora finds herself in a library. Haig knows that not all depressives are made the same we all possess various quirks and triggers, plus we’re all different people harbouring wildly varying life experiences.īut where Haig finds a commonality is through the Midnight Library itself. However, like most of Matt Haig’s writing, a remarkably prescient insight into a person’s mental health struggles runs throughout the book.

Not in a ‘whew, what a bad day – time for a bath, bottle of wine, and a book’ kind of done with life, but a depressive spiralling into suicidal thoughts.Īnd Nora actually succeeds in killing herself. Nora Seed, our protagonist, is done with life.

The midnight library book review