Friday, May 21, 2021

The Midnight Library

 What a fabulous plot!  This novel, The Midnight Library written by Matt Haig explores a topic I wrestle with on a regular basis.    The road not taken.... 

Quoting the poem from Robert Frost, walking down the road and coming to a fork, which road should you follow?  Whichever one you. choose you will always wonder what if I had taken the other route.  So many times I wonder what would my life look like now if I had done something differently.  Where would I be if I had made a different choice.  Even as a child I used to say to my mother, "if you had married a different father I could have had this kind of life." She would always explain, "then you wouldn't be you."

In this novel Nora Seed is the protagonist who gets to follow so many different roads.  Though the premise is different than mine wondering, the idea is still intriguing.   Nora is unhappy. with her life.  She has made choices along the way that have not brought her any. pleasure.  In fact, all she can see the the negativity of each choice.  Along the way. she has let people down and lost relationships.  

She ends up in the Midnight Library, a place where it is always midnight.  In this library the shelves are filled with the stories of her life.  She is given the chance to take a book off the shelf and live that life.  If she likes it she could stay there, if she does not she can come back to the Midnight Library and pick another book, life off the shelf.  

The question is can you really find the perfect ideal life.  Will there always be something that could be better? This book was so entertaining and fun to read, but also leaves you. with so many great morals and messages. to consider.  I think in the end I should be quite content with the life I am living and not look for the greener grass anywhere else.  

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