The Realm of Parallel Lives

Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library shows what life could have been like.

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Sarah Hayes

Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library is based around the concept of having parallel lives

Sarah Hayes, Staff Writer

Have you ever wondered what life would be like had you made a different choice? What would happen if you had gone on that trip with your friends, or spent that extra $5 donating to a charity? Matt Haig puts this theory into perspective through his new novel, The Midnight Library. 

The very first sentence in this book mentions suicide, and throughout the book there are mentions of drug and alcohol use/abuse. If you (the reader of this article) or someone you know has mental health issues, I would not recommend this book because there isn’t a warning in the book itself about these mentions. There also aren’t any references to crisis lines in the book 

Put into a realm that is perfectly between life and death, the main character Nora Seed is given the chance to see what life would be like if she hadn’t said “no” to major life-changing decisions. She wakes up in the Midnight Library, where time has frozen. She gets the chance to see what life could have been like had she made different choices.

This novel really puts life into perspective when making decisions. There can be an infinite amount of outcomes that happen when you make a choice, and in the end you can see that there aren’t really any wrong choices, just unfortunate outcomes that you can learn from. 

I do recommend this book because it’s a great eye opener to those who live their lives regretting those one small choices they made. It can really show you to appreciate life as it is when you’re feeling down.