Skip to content

The Midnight Library: Matt Haig

“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.”

Plot Overview

Nora is suffering from depression and mental health issues. And one day her despair hits rock bottom and she decides to take her life. But she found that between life and death, there is a library, where every book represents a different life, she could have lived. And she sets out on an adventure to find the best possible life for herself.

My Experience

Though I always do wonder in my life, how my life would have been if I would have taken some decisions differently, I never regret any of them. For a glance, it might seem that my life could have been different and might be better than it is now, I wish nothing different in my life. I can’t imagine myself to be living a different life or having different experiences or, being a different person.

My life may not seem perfect but for me it is perfect. I won’t deny that I don’t feel despair or discouraged in my life from time to time. But all my scars and all my experiences in my life have shaped me to become the person I am today. And I am really proud of the person I am today and of the person, I am to be in the future. And hence given a choice I will never change any decision in my life.

I knew all of this before reading this book. That’s the reason this book failed to create that much impact on me. But I agree that the premise of the book, the idea, and the execution, everything is beautifully done. And hence I can really understand why this book is loved so much.

Favorite Quotes

“The only way to learn is to live.”
"You can't live life, if you are looking for the meaning of the life"
“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.
We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”

Conclusion

This is a lovely book, beautifully executed and a very easy language. I think it is a very good pick for any beginner.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Published inBooksFiction

Be First to Comment

Share your thoughts

Discover more from ThinkSync

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading