Book Review #17 : "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig

Time and again, Matt Haig has created such an aroma of multiverse all around, with totally different approaches. I was, am and always be spellbound by his mnemonics and flavorful facts on physics and life. With this book, he has experimented with many things, like literally many!

Firstly, the concept of space between life and death. This idea only gives goosebumps, because I have seen people facing death, and now I wonder what they would have experienced. The things about life of quitting and leaving abruptly can never be fulfilled by just thinking about it. A person must go through lots of retrospections and evaluations. A person has to dig into all the regrets of life that he/she couldn’t achieve much. Matt has created a different perspective of the world, where a person can have time, to think about it, like a last bonus quiz question “Do you really want to quit?”

Talking about the showstopper – “Midnight Library”. This sole idea is worth spending dollars on. The void and stopped era, where the mental representation of peaceful instances of your life has the power to rule the difference between life and death. That power, that you intentionally never have given a thought. Midnight library, where there are uncountable books, innumerable possibilities of decisions taken by you, where the only thing you have to do is to just sit, be relaxed and follow the trails of book’s characters, where you will never have any idea about the path that you might have taken and resulted with contrasting outcomes. And that is not the end. This library might be just an interpretation of your imagination, and not necessarily be synced up with your sibling or neighbor or lover or mother or any stranger. This is the beauty of Midnight, where everything just shuts down to restart again with full power.

Contents and the references are outstanding, as the author has not only welded all human’s possible lives, but also curated perfectly with every related story.
I must praise the selection of characters, places and respective stories in the book. And despite every random superficial messy consequence, the main character is always aware of the reality. That is the best thing I encounter.

There are umpteen number of phrases in the book which left me aghast to think twice of my existence. There are a lot of unexplored lines, which are not so famous and yet caught me in every universe.
“She realized that’s what she was. A black hole. A dying star, collapsing in on itself.”
“She was antimatter, with added self-pity.”
“Tissues are like lives. There are always more.”
“Regrets ignore chronology. They float around.”
“..where there are books, there was always the temptation to open them.”
“It was wild to think of this life co-existing with her others in the multiverse, like just another note in a chord.”
“The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life.”

I am so humbled, happy, sad, amazed, confused and excited after reading this masterpiece. I can never think of any better writer than Matt Haig, who has perfectly scribbled this time and love across every parallel lives. Must read for every reader and non-readers out there, who thinks life is just about a one-time shot!

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