Reflections on ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig
I’m not a big reader.
However, a week’s holiday without the kids seemed like the ideal opportunity, so I ventured into the book shop at Gatwick airport to make my choice. With so many to choose from, I eventually selected ‘The Midnight Library’. I had heard of it - the front cover informs me that it is a ‘multi-million copy bestseller’ - but a fellow shopper took the time to lean over and inform me that ‘that’s a really good book!’ Decision made. “I’ll give this one a go”, I thought, slightly intrigued as to what about his writing had impressed so many.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (a paper cut out of different buildings on a night sky background. The subtitle says: One Liibrary, Infinite Lives).
Through his main character ‘Nora Seed’, Matt Haig touches on themes of identity, relationships, and mental health. ‘What’s the purpose of life?’ seemed to be a big overarching question.
Growing up, Nora did well academically and at sport. However, she constantly felt under the pressure of her parents to succeed and meet their expectations. As a school girl, she experienced the grief of her father passing away, and as she grew up, her life’s plans and dreams slowly whittled away as she lost her job, her friends, and her cat. Spiralling into a dark depression, Nora attempted to take her life, which is where Matt’s imagination really kicks in, creating a multiverse in between life and death where regrets can be reversed and alternative lives can be tried out.
As Nora feels the unbearable weight of her ‘Book of Regrets’ in the midnight library, she understands that life is made up of individual choices. Each decision, big or small, can have a significant impact on the trajectory of one’s life. Each book in the library offers her a different life, based upon one individual decision having been made differently. So off she goes into the life of a famous musician, an olympic swimmer, a successful glaciologist, or a wife and mother, amongst others. Each of which lasts (with various degrees of joy and sorrow) until she realises that that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and is swiftly returned to the midnight library to select another option.
As the lives tick by, Nora experiences what it is to love and to be loved, and eventually decides that she wants to live. With this new and determined realisation, Nora re-enters the reality of her ‘root life’ - complete with all its struggles - with a new resolve to get help and to live. Nora writes in her subsequent social media post that,
“though today that same messy life seems just as messy, and I feel the weight of being, something has changed. I have found something within this darkness. Hope. Potential.”
But in what has she found her new hope? In life itself - in knowing that where “there was uncertainty there was also possibility, whatever the present looked like.” In no longer feeling ‘she was there simply to serve the dreams of other people’ but rather ‘orbiting her own purpose, and [being] answerable to herself.’ In concluding that ‘we only need to be one person. We only need to be one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite.’
As I read the book, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of sadness.
This story reflects what is a reality for so many today. To one degree or another, we all feel the brokenness of this world. Of loved-ones lost, of hopes and dreams shattered, of physical and mental ill-health, and perhaps are left thinking ‘What’s the purpose of life?’
Perhaps that is one of the reasons the book has been so popular, and considered by so many to be a ‘really good book’, as it seeks to identify with some of our deepest struggles, and to offer hope. However, as a loved child of God and a friend of the Lord Jesus, I found the hope offered in the book so deeply lacking.
Having become a man and so fully knowing the struggles of this life, Jesus said “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt 11:28-29). In Jesus we have hope and a deep purpose, through the struggles. Whether we are ‘successful’ in the eyes of the world (or perhaps even our own); whether we are married or single; whether we are healthy or ill, through His death and resurrection, Jesus calls us to himself to be his dearly loved children. A love so unconditional, unchanging, and unimaginably deep that it reaches ‘as high as the heavens are above the earth’ (Psalm 103:11). This love is not dependent on anything that we have achieved - in fact, it’s exactly the opposite. We come to Christ precisely because we realise we have nothing to offer, and because he lived a perfect life in our place.
Nora’s realisation that ‘we only need to be one person…one existence’ feels so liberating in many ways. Often we can find ourselves pulled in so many directions with multiple demands upon our time and energy. Yet her following statement about being infinite seems to jar with my experience of life. Although we may often wish we were, heading to bed in the evening should promptly remind us that this is just not true. We are finite, limited. Limited in knowledge, limited in skill, limited in power, limited in energy. But we are called to contentment. In God’s wisdom and kindness this is how he created us. Our finiteness should point us to our Creator, causing us to remember our dependence upon Him, the only infinite one. What good news it is that the one who is truly infinite in knowledge, power and strength is also infinitely gracious, loving and good. As he looks upon his children he has compassion on us, remembering that we are dust (Psalm 103). As we depend on him, we are assured that his strength will be made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinithians 12). We need not fear because he promises to uphold us (Isaiah 41:10).
The weight of responsibility reflected upon each and every decision also felt somewhat unbearable, as it could completely alter the trajectory of your entire life, for good or for ill. Whilst on the one hand this is true - if I had married a different man my life would be very different - what a wonderful blessing it is to know that we have a sovereign God who not only allows everything to happen, but actively ordains all things. For someone who struggles with indecision like me, what peace it can bring knowing that we cannot step outside of God’s good ‘plan A’ for our lives. Yes, we are to use the brains God has given us, to ask for wisdom which the Lord delights to give, and to prayerfully seek to make decisions, both big and small, which align with his revealed will in Scripture. However, as God’s people, we can rest assured that ‘all things will work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to his purpose’ (Rom 8:28).
Life won’t necessarily be a bed of roses.
In fact the Lord Jesus promises us the opposite if we take up our crosses and follow him; living lives that orbit around him, rather than ourselves. But, as we see in Genesis through to Revelation, God has a great plan of salvation which cannot be thwarted. He knows who are his, and whilst we don’t know what tomorrow will hold, he does, and ultimately he promises one day to bring us home. Home to a new creation where ‘he will wipe every tear from their eyes’; where ‘there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’ (Rev 21:4).
Nora found great relief that her ‘heavy and painful Book of Regrets had been successfully burnt to dust’. With this weight lifted she found a new freedom to hope in the myriad of opportunities that life offers: of ‘watching radiant skies and mediocre Ryan Bailey comedies, and [to] be happy listening to music and conversation and the beat of her own heart.’ But the question remains, where is the hope when that life itself comes to an end?
In contrast, the gospel offers us something far greater: life eternal.
A life where not just our regrets but our sins can be left at the foot of the cross. Not burnt but forgiven. A life where we are loved unconditionally and undeservedly by the God who made us. A life where we can enjoy the wonderful multitude of creation blessings our heavenly Father has showered on us (including this book) with gratefulness to the giver. A life that, even when death comes, we can look forward to a far greater reality where darkness truly will give way to certain hope.
As the Heidelberg Catechism beautifully puts it:
Q. What is your only comfort in life and death?
A. That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him.
~ Vicky Cockram