The Midnight Library

by Matt Haig

You get near a black hole and the gravitational pull drags you into its bleak, dark reality.

But her life was a cacophony of nonsense. A piece that could have gone in wonderful directions, but now went nowhere at all.

Dear Whoever, I had all the chances to make something of my life, and I blew every one of them. Through my own carelessness and misfortune, the world has retreated from me, and so now it makes perfect sense that I should retreat from the world. If I felt it was possible to stay, I would. But I don’t. And so I can’t. I make life worse for people. I have nothing to give. I’m sorry. Be kind to each other. Bye, Nora

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

A person was like a city. You couldn’t let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don’t like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.

you drink like a fish and I think you only appreciate me when you don’t have me, which is not a great trait to have. What about my dreams?’

‘Want,’ she told her, in a measured tone, ‘is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem. Maybe there is a life that you really want to live.’

‘So, you see? Sometimes regrets aren’t based on fact at all. Sometimes regrets are just…’ She searched for the appropriate term and found it. ‘A load of bullshit.’

sometimes the only way to learn is to live.’

‘The only way to learn is to live.’

she had felt she was really just an extension of the pain in his left knee. A walking wound.

‘Life is strange,’ she said. ‘How we live it all at once. In a straight line. But really that’s not the whole picture. Because life isn’t simply made of the things we do, but the things we don’t do too. And every moment of our life is a…kind of turning.’

It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective.