The Midnight Library: A Novel
By: Matt Haig / Narrated By: Carey Mulligan
Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
Surprisingly stellar; thought I might hate it but wound up weeping at the end and loving my life… Go figure…!
I really dunno what I was expecting when I went into The Midnight Library. I’m used to Matt Haig’s Christmas stories for kids (And wonder-filled adults!) which are joyous and fantastical. Plus, I must admit that I kinda sorta DID read the Publisher’s Summary, and I found the premise intriguing. During this week of Listening to audiobooks that were inspired by fellow Accomplices, I was drawn to an audiobook that I thought my sister might like. After all, her favorite of the Borges Collected Fictions our audiobook club did involve a Library—a contemplation of Life and the Universe.
So here we have our heroine, Nora Seed, clinically depressed at the story’s opening. Life is hard for her, situations are not turning out positively; as a matter of fact things couldn’t get worse. Until they do. And keep doing. She’s done in, can’t breathe a second more, and she decides to take her own life. Now see, I read some of the scathing reviews of the book (And ‘twould appear to be a Love It or Hate It one), and those reviewers reeeeally thought Haig was making light and trite something as devastating as suicide and that Nora was a total creep for dismissing all the good in her life, ungrateful, and unworthy of her blessings. But I’m here to tell you, when you’re THAT clinical, all you’re living in is pain. You CAN’T see the good because your body is weighed down, oh so heavily, with grief and despair. You don’t see a sunset, you see the utter darkness coming. I could feel Nora’s weariness, feel it as it weighed her down, making her bones heavy, making her heart and mind numb. Suicide? Totally, I saw it.
But when she makes her attempt, she “comes to” in a massive library where an old librarian she loved in life, Mrs. Elm is the librarian here. She’s in a library between life and death, where she has the opportunity to address fears, address regrets (And oh HOW heavy that book of Regrets is!), address even hopes. Each time she tells Mrs. Elm about something, some pain, Mrs. Elm finds her a book where she can live out that new life, see how it goes. If it’s disappointing, she’ll be pulled back to the Library; if it’s fulfilling, she’ll stay in it, losing her memory of any lives she’s tried, losing her memory of the very Library itself. And if things go horribly wrong? No matter to Nora; she’d just as soon be dead, no loss.
I s’pose this all COULD be trite, esPECially since I was thinking nothing so deep as parallel universes so much as “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray. Cuz I’m pretty lowbrow like that. Where each life is a new chance to either be or to die. Where pain is learning. Where missed chances come loaded with reality. Where Nora takes bits and pieces, starts speaking her newfound truths during each life but only realizes the one thing, that special epiphany, when she believes she truly will be killed in a life: Oh how desperately she wants to live. And soon she’s embracing each chance, learning how joy sometimes comes with great sorrow; how very real loss is worked into each life.
Carey Mulligan is flat-out awesome as the narrator. She put sooo much feeling into each character, into each life. And she did a wiiiiiide variety of accents, making an American sound like a normal American and not the weird Southerner/Valley Girl that some Brits do when going for the nationality. Brava! Plus, there is so much pain in this book, so much loss, so much hope. And Mulligan captures and conveys it all, passion where there’s feeling, and quiet where there’s loss or maybe a numb understanding. May I say it again: Brava?
And when all is said and done? Well, p’raps it all turns out predictably, so maybe yes, some people found this book unworthy, and yawn-inducing. Won’t tell you exactly how this ends, but of COURSE you probably already have an idea. Just suffice it to say that I didn’t feel like I finished listening to a really good audiobook, I felt like I’d had a good cry.
My mom once told us kids that she was proud of every gray hair she had; it was life being met, life being lived. I’d like to add that this story had me proud of every scar I bear, loving the rough parts, the parts I don’t like looking at; it was life being met, life being survived. We’re worth every pain, worth every sorrow; we feel, we hope, we pick ourselves up. And if we’re lucky, very lucky, we learn along the way. The joy comes in not the ending, but the entire journey if we but choose to wear our scars with pride.
Not even 9 hours.
And it had me loving 54 years of blessings and sorrows seen with new eyes.
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