Every once in a while, you do something that you regret – getting the chance to take a “do-over” in life is a dream come true. If you went left instead of right – opened the door instead of walking by; these choices are what makes life interesting. So what if you were able to go back and change that choice? The Midnight Library shows what those changes could mean for the protagonist Nora Seed. Her life is crap – everything that she has done or touched has been bad: She is at the very edge of the precipice, her toes hanging over, feeling like the last thing that anyone could ever want is to be near the negativity that she is.
This is a character that I really didn’t like at the beginning of the book. Now, I completely understood her, but she is so very un-likable. The type of person who will say no even before thinking about what was asked.
As a person who has dealt with chronic depression for the past (gulp) 30+ years, I understand the fear and allure of wanting to not only leave the life you’ve been living but the desire to somehow start over anew, making better choices and taking more interesting chances. I’ve never gotten all the way to the point of wanting to die, but I have, on a really bad day, wanted to stop life and figure out a way to take a break from everything. I would be really excited to get the chance to turn left instead of right, just once.
And being tired – God, I am “tired” most days. When someone asks if I’m OK, my standard response is, “I’m tired.” Ask anyone who deals with depression – that is understood to mean, “I’m feeling like garbage and want to just figure out a way to get out of that feeling.” The want to get away from the difficulties of life is something that anyone would jump at – but with depression, the desire to start again can be almost overwhelming. Which is why I think that people contemplate suicide – I have never gotten to that point, however I can understand where it comes from.
The other thing I have always thought is that suicide is the most selfish act anyone could possibly do. Yes, horribly selfish, taking away someone important from friends and family. Yes, we as depressed people are exhausted – but in the attempt to stop hurting yourself and others, you end up doing both. No one knows what happens after death. If there is a library allowing you to re-do life, great; but what if there is nothing? You’ve taken yourself away from mothers/fathers, sisters/brothers, friends. Yes, family has no choice to be around you, but friends are there because they like you – or maybe even love you. Why would you take that from them? Now there is an empty hole in their heart that YOU put there. Selfish. The better thing to do is to find someone who is willing to listen to the repetitious bullshit that we find running around in our heads and hope that by putting it out there, something will change for the better.
Wow, that got deep.
Back to the book.
Nora goes back over and over to make different decisions allowing her to have a new life, however none fit the ideal she is hoping for. Sort of like Goldilocks and the porridge. One life where she is a teacher, one where she was an Olympic swimmer and one where she followed her best friend to live in Australia. Each one fixed a regret that she had in her original life, but she never finds the “just right” version.
Nora also meets Hugo in one of her lives (she is a glaciologist in that one) who also “visits lives” that are not his. While Nora has a library with Mrs. Elm, Hugo has his Uncle Philippe in a video store and he explains that this is something that has happened to others as well (what he calls “sliders”). He is quite happy to have this “life:” “I kind of like being a slider. I like imperfection. I like keeping death as an option. I like never having to settle.”
While Nora is not very likable, Mrs. Elm is. Mrs. Elm is the amalgamation of librarians everywhere – teachers to the core, helping students find the right information. Mrs. Elm offers different books (lives) for Nora to try while between life and death and is available when Nora comes back to the Library to guide her to the next. Mrs. Elm is a construct of Nora’s mind (“But you aren’t a real person. You’re just a . . . mechanism.”) which allows her to find the way through the Midnight Library to the end.
I wonder if we all have a Mrs. Elm in our head helping find our way through life?
And to finish without spoilers, as Mrs. Elm tells Nora, “You don’t have to understand life – you just have to live it.”
So go out and live – that’s my plan!