A Novel Review : "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig

 Hi, everyone!

    On this occasion, I would like to review a novel that I've been already read. The title is "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig. I bought this book with the English Version. This book has 271 pages with 73 chapters. This book won the best seller version of The New York Times and it was number 1 on Sunday Times. So, why did I buy this book? Because I'm curious about the library at midnight. I was wondering how the library can open at midnight, because we know that the library will be closed at night. After I read it, it was not like my expectation. 

Here's the synopsis that maybe it can made you want to read this book : 

'Between life and death there is a library', she said. 'And within that library, the shelves go on forever'. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had other choices ... Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?

    This book tells about a young woman named Nora Seed who lives in Bedfordshire, London. She felt her life was useless and unhappy with her life choices. Nothing she did went well. Every step she took was a mistake, every decision was a disaster. 

    Nora has panic attacks and overthink problems. She is a woman who is frustrated because her parents are divorced, after then her mother died, her best friend Izzy who lives far away in Australia, communication with her brother is not going well and the death of her beloved cat (Voltaire). She disappointed her father by giving up swimming and buried her dream of swimming in the Olympics. Nora also left out as vocalist for The Labyrinth, the band formed by her brother Joe and her friend named Ravi. Nora and Dan were a couple. Unfortunately, they got divorced. All these things made her depressed. She felt her life has no meaning anymore and she decides to end her life with suicide. But the story doesn't end there. Instead of seeing a bright light like in the movies, Nora woke up in  a place called the Midnight Library, which exists between life and death. She thought that she died. The Midnight Library filled with books containing endless parallel lives she could have lived. Nora gets the chance to experience different paths in life that could have unfolded if she had made slightly different choices. This library is run by her school librarian, Mrs. Elm. 

    She is given a chance to undo her regrets by putting those lives to the test and starting where she should have been the night she ended her life. In the midnight library, Nora lives and becomes hundreds of different versions of herself. Some she'd never even understood with what happen with her, but she is faced with tough choices. She must decide what she is willing to sacrifice in order to permanently live in her one of an "ideal" life that seems perfect for a period of time, but a truly new challenge awaits her.

    This novel is very well written. Nora's feelings are deeply portrayed, and I was fascinated by the depth of Haig's storytelling. The concept is simple but it draws me in as a reader and covers so many different emotional experiences that life comes with. and spent imagining endless possibilities. That's the mark of a talented writer. I appreciated the depth of this novel, but I found it repetitive and unreliable when I was elaborating on it, even though the key ideas were already obvious. For me, there are a lot of unfamiliar words and I should translate it. So, I can understood the meaning. I like Nora's personal growth in this book. Overall, I really enjoyed Midnight Library. The character development, setting, and plot are great, and even it discuss important current issues such as mental health. I noticed that Nora's self-exploration is full of her fascination with discovering what really matters in her life.

    My favorite page is 92. The words "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 on it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it....". I'm in love with this, because it is true that "you should be you, don't pretend to be another person. the only one who knows you, it's yourself. And don't worry about people's comment."

   I would recommend this book for you to read. It is a short and challenging novel that made you think deeply about life. And it may just awaken you to how much unlocked talent that you have! So, what do you think guys? What should we do if we have a friend that has mental health issues?