by Matt Haig, 2020
Fun book! This was one of the Old Town Library Book Club’s selections for 2023-2024, for February 2024. It’s about a young British girl, Nora Seed, who is full of regrets and decides to kill herself by taking all of her anti-depressants. She wakes up in the Midnight Library with Mrs. Elm, her old school librarian. She gets to choose different lives, re-living her regrets. She sees what happens when she chooses to be an Olympic swimmer, a glaciologist, a rock star, marry Dan who wants to own a pub, go to Australia with her friend, say yes to coffee with Ash, and even keep her kitty inside rather than let it go outside. Once she has seen where each of those take her, she truly wants to live, and she wants to live the life she had. She wakes up vomiting as the Midnight Library crashes and burns, and she loves her life and sees how important her “little” life is – to the boy she teaches piano, to her elderly next door neighbor, to her brother, etc.
It’s a good book. It considers there might be a God – maybe Mrs. Elm is God, but she isn’t as all-powerful and all-loving and all-knowing as our one True God. But at least it gives those who feel their life is meaningless the idea that their life matters – that each loving kindness they express is important. It also shows the importance of decisions. But, it makes decisions seem all-important, when really we cannot control anything, only how we humbly love our neighbor and we can’t do that without the power of the Holy Spirit in us. Come, Lord Jesus, come!
Some parts of the book that hint at God, Nora asks Mrs Elm if she is God and Mrs Elm answers, ‘I am who I am.’ That is exactly what God tells Moses to tell the Israelites, when Moses asks God who should he say sent him. Exodus 3:14, “God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM…”
Talking with Wayne about a paragraph about chess in this book and how there are billions of possible ways to play the game, he immediately brings up parallel universes and string theory and Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe–You write one book and sell it one time in an infinite number of universes. Anyway, that is the underlying philosophy of this book, the ‘metaverse,’ parallel universes, and string theory. The music shop Nora works in, in her ‘root’ life is called “String Theory.”
Towards the end of the book, when Nora is living the life where she chose to say “yes” to Ash and have coffee, and they end up married and have a little girl, Molly, and a dog, Plato, she feels love and realizes that is what her ‘root’ life is missing. Without love, all the money, fame, luxury, possessions, are nothing. This reminds me of 1 Corinthians 13: “And now I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I posses to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
God knows us and loves us. Love God and love others. That’s all you need for life on this earth.