The Midnight Library is a 2020 novel by Matt Haig. The protagonist is Nora Seed, an unhappy woman who decides to end her life. Instead of dying, she finds herself in a mysterious library. The books in this library give her the chance to see what her life would be like if she had made different choices. Nora must find a life she can be happy in or the library might collapse and death will be inevitable.
An abridged version of the novel was read on BBC Radio by Call the Midwife's Bryony Hannah.
Not to be confused with the series of horror novels.
This novel contains examples of the following tropes:
- An Aesop: Try your best to be happy with your life because it is the only one you get to live.
- Bookends: The novel begins and ends with Nora and Mrs. Elm playing chess.
- Butterfly Effect: The decisions Nora makes have repercussions far beyond her own life. In one scenario, her father is still alive while in others her brother Joe and friend Izzy met untimely ends.
- Driven to Suicide: Nothing in Nora's life seems to be going her way so she takes an overdose in the hopes of ending her suffering. Instead, she awakens in the Midnight Library.
- Fake Better Alternate Timeline: The story follows a woman who, after being Driven to Suicide minutes before midnight, finds herself in the titular library which is filled with possible lives she could have led. The librarian tells her she must use the books to find a new life to live in. She explores many alternate choices (if she'd gone through with her wedding, if she hadn't left her band, if she'd become an Olympic swimmer, a glaciologist, etc.), leaving each one "when the disappointment becomes total." Ultimately, after experiencing a huge number of alternate lives and trying sincerely to settle down in one of them, she sees the possibilities and the value she'd overlooked in the life she wanted to leave and fights her way back to that, managing to save herself in the nick of time.
- For Want Of A Nail: The library lets Nora experience what would have happened if she made a different choice in her life at one point, usually based on her regrets. The results are not always what Nora expects, with one timeline leading to her father still being alive while her mother died much sooner, another where her best friend died in a car accident, and another where her brother died because the fame of their band got to him.
- Hero of Another Story: During one of her lives, Nora encounters Hugo Lefevere, a man who is jumping from life to life just as she is. He says he has encountered others like them and calls them "sliders". For Hugo, the library takes the form of a video store and the person he meets is his late uncle.
- I Choose to Stay: Nora is told that if she chooses to stay in one of her alternate lives, she will slowly start to forget about the library. At first disappointment keeps taking her back, but when she reaches the life where she is married to Ash, she starts staying long enough to remember things from that life she wouldn't now. Eventually subverted, though, when she realizes the effect of her absence on others and finally chooses to return to her old life.
- It's a Wonderful Plot: Played with. In the beginning of the novel, part of what drives Nora to suicide is that she feels useless to those around her. Near the end of the novel, in the life where Nora is married to Ash, she starts to see the negative effects of her absence in certain people's lives:
- The place she was fired from shut down due to her not being there to make certain huge sales.
- Her elderly neighbor went into assisted living a few years early because she wasn't around to set up his online shop and pick up his prescriptions.
- Her piano student gets arrested because his mother couldn't afford lessons with anyone else, so he never developed his talents.
- Magic Librarian: The only person Nora encounters in the library is Mrs. Elm, the librarian she knew at her university. More precisely, she is a representation of someone Nora trusts that the library uses to communicate with Nora and guide her on her journey into her other lives.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: While the library is unambiguously a fantastical place, Nora and Hugo do not know if there is a religious explanation behind it. Hugo says that the guide (whether it is Mrs. Elm or Hugo's uncle) could be God. He thinks the more likely scenario is that the library is the universe's way of translating complex quantum realities into a form that humans can understand.
- Once More, with Clarity: An in-universe example, where at one point Nora sees a memory from her youth when she tried to swim a river after her brother's friends dared her, and from her new vantage point sees that he tried to go after her but was stopped by his friends.
- The Power Of Potential: Nora initially hates the idea that she never lived up to her potential. Experiencing her alternative lives, some where she was wildly successful, helps Nora realize she truly is a "Seed" — as long as she keeps living, there will always be potential for growth. This encourages her to fight to regain the life she tried to leave behind and find the potential for good in it.
- Psycho Ex: In the life where Nora's band The Labyrinths became a huge success, her ex-fiancee Dan became obsessed with her to the point that she had to take out a restraining order against him.
- Wanting Is Better Than Having: A theme of several of the alternate lives Nora lives, such as the one where she is married to Dan.
- What Could Have Been: In-universe: Nora gets to see what would have happened if she had done things differently, such as married her fiancee, moved to Australia, become a glaciologist, etc.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: Although the time on Nora's watch never moves past midnight while she is in the library, she has all the time she needs to explore her other lives. She spends a minimum of several months trying out different scenarios. When she finally wakes up back in her old life, hardly any time has passed at all.
