In a nutshell, this is a cross between Quantum Leap and Sliding Doors, with an added sprinkling of It’s a Wonderful Life. And as I enjoyed watching all of these, I really enjoyed reading this book.
It’s not a plot spoiler to reveal that Nora Seed attempts to die. That is explained in the very first sentence. But this book is not a depressing read. It moves along at a decent clip with down to earth, matter of fact language, so when the occasional moments of poetic introspection come along, they stand out more vividly.
The Midnight Library is the place in between. Between life and death; between time; between one’s ‘root’ existence and an infinite amount of others. And when Nora Seed tries to kill herself, she is, instead, blessed with trying on a few of these other existences. She gets to work out whether all her regrets in life are merited. The two catches: she can only pick a path once, and she can only join the action from this moment on instead of when she diverged. And if it’s not the life for her, she will return to the Library.
This second catch causes a number of logistical problems, à la ‘Quantum Leap’. But it also, conveniently for the art of story-telling, speeds up the process of multi-life living, when a book of regrets as heavily weighed down as Nora’s is, needs to be explored. Less sardonically, it makes the point that even though she is stepping into her own life, it is a life that has been lived by a subtly or completely different Nora up to this point , and does she really want to skip those parts?
For example, she walks into her marriage with Dan (who, in her root life, was the fiancé she left just a couple of days before the wedding) many years after making a different decision. Where his dream of owning a pub in a bucolic setting has been realised. Sounds like a nice ready-made life to pick up doesn’t it?
The book lays out the difference between dreams and perceptions and reality. The lives that Nora explores slowly reveal what the most important things are to her, through example and a good dosing of philosophy (it’s made me want to read a bit more about Henry David Thoreau, that’s for sure).
Matt Haig gets the core idea from physics, the many worlds theory. But although he doesn’t bog you down with the science he does throw a few puns in along the way for fun. There is also the amusement of making the connections between disparate parts flung far and wide amongst the pages. Californian fires and blond boys are peripheral but give a demonstration of the interconnectedness in Nora’s many lives.
Initially I thought that Nora was an excessively high achiever: Olympic potential, offered a record contract, academically bright. And I assumed that maybe Haig created her to show that if a person like she can hit rock bottom, then anybody can. But then I realised that he was also suggesting that anybody has ‘potential’. And that was my favourite message in a book that has many really interesting things to reflect upon. Even if most of us don’t follow life’s extreme trajectories, we have the potential to matter, to be significant, to knock against the lives of others and maybe help them on a new direction.
In the words of the great Keanu Reeves, ‘It’s Quantum Baby’!
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