Book Club Session 1 - The Midnight Library

Welcome to Book Club - a monthly review of books I've been loving and think you will too. So pull up a chair, grab a cup of tea and a biscuit and get ready! A beautiful tale of life, regret, acceptance and hope, Matt Haig's novel The Midnight Library is the Hattie's World Book Club pick of July.

Plot summary:

Shop-worker Nora Seed is at the end of her tether. However, on the night she gives up on her apparently drab and disappointing life, she finds herself in a liminal space between life and death - the Midnight Library. While time stays perpetually at 12am, Nora has the opportunity to experience the different ways she may have lived her life in search of some desire to keep living. Faced with an infinity of different versions of herself, Nora begins to 'slide' between lives, spending any number of minutes, hours or days there until being disappointed once again and finding herself back in the library. After living as a globe-trotting rockstar, an olympic athlete, a mother, a wife, a pub landlady and a dog walker, Nora wakes up as an arctic glaciologist. In a hair-raising encounter with an angry polar-bear, Nora realises she no longer wants to die, and is instead desperate to keep living. After more twists and turns to find the right fit, Nora realises she had more positive impact in her original life than she ever thought possible, and returns, determined to make the best of it and try to live without regret.

Matt Haig writes with a beautiful tone of reflection and positivity even when facing the toughest topics. Since reading his 2015 book Reasons to Stay Alive, I - along with many others - have considered Matt Haig to be a refreshing voice in the discussion of mental health, wellbeing and depression. Having experienced his own struggles with mental illness, Haig's writing is nothing if not honest. Funny and emotional, The Midnight Library contains both darkness and light, moments of poignant reflection as well as some genuinely hilarious bits! I'd recommend this book for anyone that tends to feel overwhelmed and hasn't quite learned to trust life's process yet - I'd place myself firmly in this category so if that resonates with you, don't feel alone! Nora's journey teaches us that life has many different paths for us in store, the most important thing is staying true to your hopes and dreams, and it's never too late to change your mind.

"It's never too late to pursue a dream" - Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

As I prepare to graduate university and move on to a new stage in my life, this read couldn't have come at a better time. Fear of the future is present in us all, in most stages of life, as we navigate our own personal paths and try to avoid making too many mistakes that we may come to regret. However, as Haig's message so wonderfully illustrates, "it is not the lives we regret not living that are the problem. It is the regret itself". So try, as Nora does, to set aside regret and fear and live life fully.

"You don't have to understand life. You just have to live it." - Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

If you like The Midnight Library, you'll love Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig!