The Midnight Library

by Matt Haig

‘Got anyone, then? Bloke? Kids?’ Nora shook her head. Wishing it would fall off. Her own head. Onto the floor. So she never had to have a conversation with a stranger ever again.

Oddly relatable! Imagine attending Indian weddings with unnecessarily inquisitive aunties and uncles.

She had shrunk for him, but he still hadn’t found the space he needed. No more. ‘Icosagon,’ she told him. ‘What?’ ‘The quiz. Earlier. The twenty-sided polygon.

She tried to make herself look as presentable as it was possible to look in the two seconds before the arrival of a man she simultaneously slept with every night and also hadn’t ever slept with. Schrödinger’s husband, so to speak.

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.