What Amazon says
THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON
READERS’ MOST LOVED BOOK OF 2021
WINNER OF THE GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD FOR FICTION
‘BEAUTIFUL’ Jodi Picoult, ‘UPLIFTING’ i, ‘BRILLIANT’ Daily Mail, ‘AMAZING’ Joanna Cannon, ‘ABSORBING’ New York Times, ‘THOUGHT-PROVOKING’ Independent
Nora’s life has been going from bad to worse. Then at the stroke of midnight on her last day on earth she finds herself transported to a library. There she is given the chance to undo her regrets and try out each of the other lives she might have lived. Which raises the ultimate question: with infinite choices, what is the best way to live?
My review
Nora Seed is a sad and depressed thirty-something woman who has a multitude of regrets about the choices she made in her life. She feels alienated from her brother and best friend as a result of past decisions that impacted on them as well as herself. She believes that they bear a grudge against her and she is weighted down by a huge burden of guilt. In addition, she feels guilty about breaking off her engagement a short time before the wedding and secretly questions whether she did the right thing.
On the day the story starts, a series of negative events in her personal life push Nora over the edge and she decides to take an overdose of pills and end it all.
Nora wakes up in the “Midnight Library”, a place for souls suspended between life and death. In the Midnight Library, Nora becomes reacquainted with Mrs Elm, the librarian from her days at the local primary school, and a person who gave her a lot of emotional support when she most needed it. Mrs Elm also gave Nora some advice on her future career and life decisions at the time. Mrs Elm’s role in the library is to offer the same sort of counselling and support to Nora as she explores her options prior to the ultimate death or survival of her body. She also points out that if Nora dies, her time in the Midnight Library will end and her ability to make a choice to live will also end.
Mrs Elm explains to Nora that the Midnight Library contains a book of regrets which sets out all of the decisions, big and small, that Nora has made and come to regret at the time of her death. She also points out shelf after shelf of books which all contain different variations of Nora’s ‘core’ life which pivot on a change in her life decisions. There are thousands and thousands of different lives that Nora could have lived, some greatly different from her core life and some not as different, depending on the nature of the life choice made the precipitated the change in direction.
Nora is tasked with trying out different lives until she finds the one she thinks is the ‘perfect’ life for her. When she finds it, she will be able to stay in that life and will eventually assimilate into it.
I enjoyed the Nora’s journey in this book and watching her gradually come to terms with the outcome of her past decisions and how her life could have been different. It was fascinating to watch her realise that there is no real ‘perfect’ life and that every life choice comes with a set of pros and cons which you have to live with. It was also interesting to witness her reaction to the realisation that her life choices impacted on other people around her, not only the major players in her life, but also the smaller players, for example, her elderly neighbour, and a teenage boy she was teaching to play the piano.
I thought it was very clever how the author used the different ‘life’ backgrounds to illustrate these fundamental thoughts about life and it was fun to contemplate all the different variations a single life could take based on decisions and their knock on effects. I really appreciated this book and it has given me food for thought for my own life.
This book has an uplifting ending and is an insightful voyage through the thought processes and emotions of the main character as she comes to terms with her real thoughts about her life.
I have never suffered from depression so I can’t comment on the accuracy with which depression is depicted in this book. The descriptions of the hopelessness instilled by depression and the feeling of not being able to escape your own thoughts and emotions seem well done to me, but I do think that depression isn’t something that could easily be resolved through a realisation of the greater meaning of life. I am of the view that chronic depression is an illness and is very difficult to address. As a result, that part of this book did seem a little white-washed to me and it is the reason I gave the book 4 stars and not 5.
Otherwise, this is a great and through provoking story and I enjoyed it very much.
A few quotes I enjoyed from this book:
“It is not the 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 have 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.”
“If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don’t give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.”
“Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum.”
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