The Midnight Library

by Matt Haig

‘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.

‘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.’

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.’

It turned out to be near impossible to stand in a library and not want to pull things from the shelves.

And death is the opposite of possibility.

‘Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.’ ‘Exactly. But you also have

to know what you like. What to type into the metaphorical search box.

‘Never underestimate the big importance of small things,’ Mrs Elm said. ‘You must always remember that.’

But if it was important enough for David Hume to write that thought down, then maybe it was important enough to aim to do something good. To help preserve life, in all its forms.

She knew that everything humans see is a simplification. A human sees the world in three dimensions. That is a simplification. Humans are fundamentally limited, generalising creatures, living on auto-pilot, who straighten out curved streets in their minds, which explains why they get lost all the time.

It seems that you have spent all your life saying things that you aren’t really thinking. This is one of your barriers.’

You seem to realise that life could be worth living, if only you found the right one to exist inside. But you don’t want that gate to close before you get a chance to go through it.’

‘I think it is easy to imagine there are easier paths,’ she said, realising something for the first time. ‘But maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths.

Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.’

mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness.

And even if you were a pawn – maybe we all are – then you should remember that a pawn is the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinary but it isn’t. Because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to do is find a way to keep moving forward. One square after another. And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.’

Caught in the middle. Struggling, flailing, just trying to survive while not knowing which way to go. Which path to commit to without regret.

Her initial instinct had been to ignore Mrs Elm’s question. But where there were books, there was always the temptation to open them. And she realised it was the same with lives.

Nora wanted to live in a world where no cruelty existed, but the only worlds she had available to her were worlds with humans in them.

That, she supposed, was the basis of depression as well as the difference between fear and despair. Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you.

‘We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”’ ‘You know Thoreau?’

The girl put her hand in Nora’s. It felt so small and warm and it made her feel sad, the way it relaxed into her, as natural as a pearl in a shell.

And then Molly asked if she could get the watering can out and Ash explained that as it had been raining a lot recently it wasn’t necessary, because the sky had been looking after the flowers. ‘They’ll be okay. They’re looked after. The flowers have water.’ And the words echoed in Nora’s mind. They’ll be okay. They’re looked after . . .

So, this was it. This was her life. Her root life. And it was a blank page.

We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.