“Between life and death, there is a library.”
The book centres around Nora Seed, a thirty something woman caught in the middle of a life without any love or light. Living in constant darkness, she stumbles through life struggling with the thoughts of all the opportunities she missed, decisions she made, people she hurt and the “WHAT-IFS.”
With days turning from bad to worse, Nora decides to end her life, convinced that the world would be better off without her. What follows is Nora’s journey in neither heaven or hell but in a library, filled with books. Each book, showing the different course her life would have taken had she made different choices and decisions.
“It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you want to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn’t the place but the perspective.”
Nora, a former swimming champion destined for the Olympics but now a broke and unemployed adult, with no friends and family and no significant other, decides to end her life. Nora’s raw and unbridled emotions are what drive the plot forward.
Finding herself at the Midnight Library, she is given the chance to try out the different versions of her life. Through these alternate universes formed by her choices and decisions, Nora learns that each life she had regretted giving up, each decision she had regretted not making are not what they seem. She shuffles from life to life watching the story of her life unfurling many times before realising that her original life was the only one with any value. With all regrets and despair laid out to rest, Nora decides to turn her life around and start anew.
“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.”
This is a deep, dark and thought provoking book teaching us the meaning of life and choices and the baggage of regrets and disappointments that they come with. The beginning of the book was intriguing and I sympathised with Nora and understood the reasons owing to her decision to end her life. I was interested in seeing how her story unfurled. It was nerve wrecking and I found it hard to put the book down. The story does not have any antagonists or villains but talks about the personal demons a person has and how we are all in a constant battle to defeat them.
The ending was predictable and seemed a little too easy. The topics of suicide and mental health are touched in a light manner yet maintaining the seriousness. While I thoroughly enjoyed the depth of the book, I found it to get repetitive and confusing at times. I would get lost while reading and had to keep rereading the last few pages to know where I was.
Overall, the character and setting of the book are engaging and I would recommend this book to teens and adults. It is a beautifully written story with a captivating lesson of the infinite possibilities and choices that life has to offer, each having its drawbacks and disappointments.
- Alisha Desai
F.Y.B.A
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