I’m afraid I didn’t get on quite as well with The Midnight Library as almost everyone else seems to have done. I like Matt Haig’s work very much and thought that How To Stop Time in particular was quite brilliant. This one left me with some reservations.
The premise is well described in the publishers’ blurb – Nora Seed is deeply fed up with her life and full of regrets and self-blame for all the opportunities she didn’t take. The Midnight Library offers her the chance to experience some of the lives she might have had if she had made different decisions. It’s full of Matt Haig’s usual humanity, insight and compassion, Nora is a believable, flawed and rather likeable character and the message of the book is a fine, life-affirming one. However, I found the tone somewhat preachy and a little clunky at times, and the episodic nature of the story left me rather unengaged. At its best it reminded me a little of The Phantom Tollbooth (which I loved) and at its worst it reminded me a bit of Sophie’s World (which I really, really didn’t). I found it perfectly readable (of course I did – it’s Matt Haig) but by the end I felt a bit as though I’d read a slightly sententious self-help book rather than a moving novel.
I’m sorry to be slightly critical of an author whom I admire and of a book which is so widely loved, but I didn’t think this was one of Matt Haig’s best. Plenty of people have loved this, but I much prefer How To Stop Time. Only a qualified recommendation from me.
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