In the years that I have known her, my friend, Wendy, has recommended many books for me to read. Her recommendations usually run to non-fiction, usually to somewhat weighty topics. So her recommendation of a novel, the current New York Times Number One Fiction Bestseller, no less, "The Midnight Library" was a departure for her, and one that I was eager to check out. So, thanks to my local library, one that keeps normal hours, I was able to borrow, and just finished reading "The Midnight Library."
Nora Seed is a single, 35 year old woman living in a small nowhere town sixty miles outside of London. All of her dreams - being a competitive swimmer, a songwriter, a singer in a rock band, of formally studying philosophy, marrying her boyfriend and opening a pub - have all for one reason or another been scuttled. She is estranged from her only living relative, a brother, her cat has just died, she's been fired from her crummy job, and her girlfriend won't even return her text messages. Is it any wonder that Nora decides to take her own life by overdosing on her anti-depressant meds. All of this by page 35! Depressing, huh?
As it turns out, Nora doesn't end up completely dead. She gets another chance. She's not in Heaven, not in Hell, but rather in a strange sort of existential Limbo, a library of sorts, where it is perpetually midnight (Midnight Library, get it?), where her guide is the one adult in her life that showed her any love, affection, and respect, Mrs. Elm, her school librarian when she was a child. The infinite number of books in the Midnight Library each represent a different life that Nora could have had had she only made different choices in her life. Mrs. Elm thus becomes an amalgamation of Dickens' Ghosts of Christmas Past/Future, and Clarence, George Bailey's guardian angel from "It's A Wonderful Life", and throws in some elements of "Groundhog Day" and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken."
Nora gets to experience what would have happened had she married her boyfriend, had she not given up swimming, had she accepted certain invitations rather than rejected them, and, well, you get the idea. When Nora gets to experience these parallel lives, she sees that things would have turned out differently alright, but not necessarily as she might have hoped. That guy she left at the altar, but ends up marrying in this alternate life? He turned out to be a bit of lout, as it happens. Nora experiences many other lives, some last for months, some for days, some for only a few minutes. Nora learns something from each of them, and you can pretty much see how things are going to end up.
The themes of "The Midnight Library" aren't new, as I've alluded to above, but they certainly make you think of your own life and the paths you've chosen. For example, what would have happened had I gone back to Slippery Rock State after my freshman year and became that high school history teacher I set out to be? Or, what would have happened if I had accepted that job transfer to Dayton, Ohio back in 1977? Or, if I had accepted that bit part as Jodie Foster's lover in "Silence of the Lambs" when it was being filmed in Pittsburgh back in the late eighties? Okay, I made that last one up, but you get my drift.
We are all a product of the decisions that we make and are made for us or forced upon us. It is up to us to react to them and deal with the circumstances that flow from them. You can learn to appreciate what you've got. In this book, I think that author Haig serves up perhaps a few too many lives for Nora, and I could have used less of Mrs. Elm's existential babblings, but, all in all, I liked it.
Two and Three-Quarters Stars from The Grandstander, and sincere thanks to Wendy for the recommendation.
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