The recap
Nora Seed is thirty-five, newly fired from her job at a small-town music shop, grieving her cat and convinced she has let everyone down: the band she walked away from, the swimming career she abandoned, the fiance she left days before their wedding. On the night she decides she cannot go on, she finds herself in a strange library suspended between life and death. Its endless shelves hold books containing every other life she might have lived had she chosen differently, and with help from a familiar librarian she can step into any one of them. So Nora tries on her regrets one by one, from rock star to glaciologist to Olympic swimmer, searching for the version of herself that might finally be happy. Haig handles depression with tenderness and a light touch, turning a philosophical thought experiment into a brisk, warm-hearted fable about regret, possibility and what really makes a life worth living. It is a gentle book about the courage it takes to keep choosing.
Why read it
For anyone who has ever wondered about the road not taken; a hopeful, quick read for readers going through a low patch or a big decision.
Fun facts
- 01
The Midnight Library won the 2020 Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction by just five votes over Fredrik Backman's Anxious People, the closest race in the award's history.
- 02
Haig has written openly about his own experience of depression, most notably in his 2015 memoir Reasons to Stay Alive.
- 03
Haig also writes for children; his novel A Boy Called Christmas was adapted into a 2021 film.
