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A review by booksamongstfriends
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
3.0
2.5 rounded up.
“The fun is in the jumping, mon amie.’
—
But what if it’s in the landing?’”
Quite frankly, reading this book I was bored. I read this book after The Husbands, and there were clearly some major similarities. It ultimately made it clear that I was disinterested in both books. Are they books that you could get through and finish? For sure. But are they books I’ll go back and read again? Definitely not.
I do think there’s a particular audience for this book, especially if you’re someone who enjoys self-help and that kind of ambiguous feeling of being seen through poster quotes. This book definitely gave me those moments where it just wanted to drop inspirational quotes to feel profound, even though we didn’t really go through enough depth to get there. In the beginning, I was really engrossed with the concept and the look into mental health and how our character’s depression had led her to this point and her position in the Midnight Library—the simple concept of looking at her life through her regrets. But it also felt like we didn’t get enough of her present life to feel connected to her, so just as she became lost in these versions of herself and others, so do we. Not really caring about the result and really being able to see what was coming a mile away.
Overall, this book is about realizing that your life is what you make it, seeing that there is still opportunity in your life to change it for the better, that there is always potential to come back or turn your life around or turn it into something that you desire. While I enjoyed the conversations about mental illness and health, I thought maybe there could’ve been another way she ended up in the Midnight Library. Taking the approach of depression and ending one’s life made it seem like that was the turn it took to make her life better. It wasn’t changing and getting a new job. It wasn’t pursuing a different love. Through all her pursuits and all her visions of life and choices that she could’ve made, it was ultimately her decision to die that positioned her to repair connections and shape her perspectives with her family and friends around her. I do think that was a little bit of a hazardous approach to the book, and I wonder if the author fully thought about how someone could read this and leave with that message as well. Or see it as some performative act of attention-seeking.
I think this book would’ve been better as a short story. For all the author said, they could’ve used fewer pages.
“The fun is in the jumping, mon amie.’
—
But what if it’s in the landing?’”
Quite frankly, reading this book I was bored. I read this book after The Husbands, and there were clearly some major similarities. It ultimately made it clear that I was disinterested in both books. Are they books that you could get through and finish? For sure. But are they books I’ll go back and read again? Definitely not.
I do think there’s a particular audience for this book, especially if you’re someone who enjoys self-help and that kind of ambiguous feeling of being seen through poster quotes. This book definitely gave me those moments where it just wanted to drop inspirational quotes to feel profound, even though we didn’t really go through enough depth to get there. In the beginning, I was really engrossed with the concept and the look into mental health and how our character’s depression had led her to this point and her position in the Midnight Library—the simple concept of looking at her life through her regrets. But it also felt like we didn’t get enough of her present life to feel connected to her, so just as she became lost in these versions of herself and others, so do we. Not really caring about the result and really being able to see what was coming a mile away.
Overall, this book is about realizing that your life is what you make it, seeing that there is still opportunity in your life to change it for the better, that there is always potential to come back or turn your life around or turn it into something that you desire. While I enjoyed the conversations about mental illness and health, I thought maybe there could’ve been another way she ended up in the Midnight Library. Taking the approach of depression and ending one’s life made it seem like that was the turn it took to make her life better. It wasn’t changing and getting a new job. It wasn’t pursuing a different love. Through all her pursuits and all her visions of life and choices that she could’ve made, it was ultimately her decision to die that positioned her to repair connections and shape her perspectives with her family and friends around her. I do think that was a little bit of a hazardous approach to the book, and I wonder if the author fully thought about how someone could read this and leave with that message as well. Or see it as some performative act of attention-seeking.
I think this book would’ve been better as a short story. For all the author said, they could’ve used fewer pages.