Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Midnight Library: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
    The Midnight Library: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
    The Midnight Library: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Midnight Library: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)

    Written by Matt Haig

    Narrated by Carey Mulligan

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    The #1 New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon

    Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | Independent (London) Ten Best Books of the Year

    "A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits."—The Washington Post

    The dazzling reader-favorite about the choices that go into a life well lived, from the acclaimed author of How To Stop Time and The Comfort Book.

    Don’t miss Matt Haig’s latest instant New York Times besteller, The Life Impossible, available now

    Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

    In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Audio
    Release dateSep 29, 2020
    ISBN9780593340233
    Author

    Matt Haig

    MATT HAIG is the bestselling author of The Midnight Library. His most recent work is the non-fiction title The Comfort Book. He has written two other books of non-fiction and six highly acclaimed novels for adults, as well as many books for children. Matt Haig has sold more than a million books worldwide. His work has been translated into more than forty languages.

    More audiobooks from Matt Haig

    Related to The Midnight Library

    Related audiobooks

    Contemporary Women's For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Queen Of Booktok

      Feb 17, 2023

      Queen Of Booktok
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How To Install Your First Widget

      Feb 9, 2021

      > As you would expect with Apple, the company has made installing widgets in iOS 14 a piece of cake. Your device will come with Apple apps that have their own widgets ready to go, although you might have to launch third-party apps at least once befor

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Family Sharing

      Mar 29, 2022

      Family Sharing
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Crescent City

      Dec 1, 2021

      Crescent City
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Adjust Speed Settings

      Jul 18, 2019

      Adjust Speed Settings
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      J. Jezewska Stevens

      Dec 15, 2017

      The party was a failure. I can’t even tell you what a failure it was. There are no words. Only a great pain in my chest when I wake up. On the veranda. It’s better when I sit in the chair. Oh, but then I can see around. The gauzy curtains, pushed by

      15 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      Are you ready? I nodded. She slid the needle inand the sick cat, who only a moment before had tried toleap to the floor closed his eyes and exhaled. Andthat’s it, she said a little too brightly, pulling the needle out.That’s it? I asked. That’s all t

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      HOMEBUSH Hotel

      May 14, 2020

      HOMEBUSH Hotel
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      We went to visit our brother.They had a special, blue roomfor the purpose of waiting.A counselor came over andcalled my sweater “too provocative.”Nora started laughingand then I started laughingand then our brother came outand told us about the squir

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Run, Baby, Run!

      Sep 25, 2023

      Run, Baby, Run!
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Nugrybauti

      Apr 24, 2019

      Nugrybauti
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Lost Prayer

      Feb 2, 2023

      A Lost Prayer
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Excerpts From The Works Of The 2024 Whiting Award Winners

      Apr 10, 2024

      The 2024 Whiting Award winners were announced Wednesday night. Below are excerpts from their work.

      19 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      King Of Hearts

      Nov 7, 2024

      King Of Hearts
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Echos

      Jan 10, 2019

      Before Corrine’s husband abandoned her in Berlin, he liked to say that her name reminded him of the word “corrupt.” But ending in a twist rather than a split. Her last name was the French word for “swimsuit” but he never mentioned that. This seemed s

      17 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      His Brilliant Career

      Mar 19, 2023

      His Brilliant Career
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Life In The past Lane

      Aug 27, 2021

      Life In The past Lane
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      It Happened to Me…

      Aug 8, 2024

      It Happened to Me…
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Night At The Freud Museum

      May 29, 2024

      A night at the Freud Museum! The idea appeals. The post Night at the Freud Museum appeared first on The Millions.

      13 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Midnight Library

    4/5

    3,240 ratings199 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Interesting premise, and overall well-written. The characters were quite nuanced, and the story was gripping enough to keep me reading to the end. I had no problem for the first part of the novel suspending my disbelief enough to accept the concept, but it got so bogged down in the middle by trying to sell the "science" behind that it really just succeeded in making the premise seem kind of ridiculous. This might have been a nice parable or fantasy story, but by over-explaining and by taking itself way too seriously, it just made it harder for me to accept the story on its own terms. I started getting bothered by how little regard Nora has been showing the other Noras, swooping into their lives, pushing them into limbo (or something?), screwing things up for them, and then ducking out when things get bad, leaving them to live with the mess she made. The theory of the multiverse is—to my understanding—debated in scientific circles; it is not a universally (ha ha) accepted fact the way this book seems to imply. The more seriously the book would take itself and its premise, the harder it would be to gloss over stuff like this. I also didn't enjoy the last part of the story very much; it leans pretty hard into an atheistic worldview and then gets preachy. This doesn't mean it's objectively bad writing, but it isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea. Certainly not mine.
    • 5/5
      This was a very interesting and enjoyable read. It was such a different storyline. The main character, Nora, decides life isn’t worth living so she tries to commit suicide. She suddenly finds herself in a library with an old lady, Mrs. Elm, who was her librarian during high school. Nora is then sent to many different lives that she could have had and looks over all of her regrets through her life. The story takes you to all the different lives Nora and who she may have been.
    • 3/5
      Books about the "in-between" always fascinate me. In many ways this one reminded me of Zevin's Elsewhere (which I recommend) and Poore's Reincarnation Blues (which I highly recommend). This was an interesting take on how our choices affect our parallel lives. Nora Seed was an interesting character and that's what propelled me forward, however, more than the story. While I enjoyed the alternate lives, I will admit that I skimmed the last 20 pages pretty heavily; I didn't need a bow on top.
    • 3/5
      It might have been the audio-narrator in part, but this book felt really monotonous and expected until the last couple chapters. That said the ending was absolutely beautiful!
    • 2/5
      Given all the hype around this book I was a little underwhelmed. As someone who shares the diagnosis with Nora, the ending was honestly even more depressing.

      I feel like it’s also a bit of oversight that in all the chatter about this book, no one has given a trigger warning for the constant talk of suicide and suicidal ideation throughout this book.

      It’s not that she’s between life and death from an accident, she’s deciding whether she wants to live at all. For me this takes away from the magic of exploring a library of possibilities and puts ideas and words into the mouths of those already lost to suicide or are still struggling with ideation.

      It’s not just a way to facilitate the start of the plot, it’s a constant recurrence throughout the book and is the core of the story.

      All of that said, I didn’t dislike the book and despite the cringey lives Nora steps into (or rather, how she tries to save face), it was an interesting adventure.
    • 4/5
      Trigger Warning: Suicide & Depression

      Life is hard. Life is messy. That is at the heart of the narrative in The Midnight Library. Nora is a woman in her thirties feeling intensely dissatisfied with her life. She not only feels that she has failed to achieve her own goals and potential but worries that she has ruined the lives of others. After the events of one particularly awful day, she decides to kill herself.

      The afterlife she finds herself in isn't anything she would have expected. Rather, she enters a library with what appears to be endless rows of books. She quickly meets Mrs. Elm who acts as a sort of spirit guide and caretaker of the library. Mrs. Elm is in the form of Nora's childhood librarian who was a kind of solace during hard times in her youth.

      Mrs. Elm explains that each one of the books represents an alternate version of Nora's life. It is a life in which different decisions were made that created different outcomes. Nora now has the unique opportunity to select a book and take her place in that life to see if it is the life she would like to return to. If the book/life she selects doesn't meet Nora's desires she will return to the library and select another book again and again until she finds her perfect life.

      We follow Nora closely as she selects a couple of different books. She lives a life in which she kept up her swimming and became a professional swimmer, a life where she stayed close to her brother and the band they were in together and a life where she explored a science career studying glaciers. In addition to in-depth explorations we get quick blurbs about other options she tried and ultimately gave up on. Through these varied experiences the story delves deeper into exploring fundamental questions about fulfillment and the human condition.

      After a time, the book begins to feel like a philosophy or psychology book as it outlines a variety of mantras and realizations about what is important in life and how comparison and striving for perfection will lead to more dissatisfaction. Nora begins to explore choices with more discernment and a more thoughtful mindset, acknowledging that there may not be a perfect life but there are certainly options that are good enough. This exploration of imperfection and acceptance resonates throughout the book, ultimately underscoring a profound message about life's inherent messiness and the importance of personal agency. Just when Nora feels like she may have found THE life she wants to settle down in, she finds herself unsettled again.

      Something is missing. Something isn't quite right. Within that life, she goes searching for what is missing and makes additional realizations that I won't spoil for you here (though you can likely guess what they may be). As her sense of unease grows, she faces a new set of trials that dramatically run to the conclusion of the book. The story ties things up with a bow, acknowledging again that life is messy and imperfect but that we can make the most of life if we decide what to make of it.

      I really liked the concept of the book. The different vignettes were fun as we got to explore different mini-stories with the same general cast of characters. In some ways this felt like a 21st-century multiverse take on It's a Wonderful Life and, similar to that movie, a lot of the platitudes and story arcs felt predictable and familiar. Even with that familiarity this is a good, heartfelt novel that's unique enough to warrant reading. It's well crafted and enjoyable and has good messages that we should remind ourselves of more often.

      ****
      4 out of 5 stars
    • 3/5
      It’s basically an updated take on It’s a Wonderful Life, which comes to precisely the same conclusion: The most amazing, adventuresome thing you can do is to stay put, and appreciate what you have.

      I don’t quite buy it. But it was a nice read, overall.
    • 5/5
      10/10, not just because I'm biased as a librarian (ha)
    • 5/5
      This one got me right in the feels.
    • 4/5
      Nora has decided she wants to die, but before this end comes, she goes on a visit to the Midnight Library. Actually, she goes there many, many times. She meets her old school librarian, Mrs. Elm, who tells her that she can choose a different life, make a different choice, over and over and over again, just by selecting a different book with Mrs. Elm’s help. If she finds the right life, the one that really makes her happy, she just might get to keep it. But there are no guarantees. This book is quite entertaining and intriguing—who wouldn’t like a “do-over”?—but it gets a bit tedious towards the end. The ending is ambiguous, but then, life is uncertain. Many nice things occur in Nora’s many possible lives; others are not so nice. It’s a creative premise, the writing is good, and the characters are well developed.
    • 4/5
      Thirty-five-year-old Nora Seed believes that she has messed up her life, and is prepared to call it quits. However, fate has other plans for this dispirited young woman. She ends up in the netherworld of "The Midnight Library," a place where Mrs. Elm, the kindly librarian from Nora's former school, is a Yoda-like font of wisdom who presides over a collection of volumes that represent, to paraphrase Robert Frost, "the roads not taken." Instead of continuing to wallow in self-pity over not having realized her potential—Nora had the talent of an Olympic-caliber swimmer, was a budding scientist, an excellent singer, and a gifted composer—she will now have the rare opportunity to decide whether other choices would have brought her the fulfillment she has yearned for but never achieved.

      Nora is a likable but insecure young woman whose mother "treated her like a mistake in need of correction." In addition, Nora resented the pressure that her father exerted on her to excel in swimming. Although she majored in philosophy in college, she settled for a mundane life, working at a menial job and taking care of her cat, Voltaire. Small wonder that she is so lonely and depressed that and wants to end it all.

      Matt Haig's absorbing book will interest readers who enjoy stories about parallel universes. If you've ever wondered what might have happened had you married your high-school sweetheart, chosen a more lucrative or exciting profession, or written that novel that you never got around to finishing, this book is likely to resonate with you. As we accompany Nora on her journey, Haig entertains us with his dark humor and lively cast of characters. Seed travels to the Arctic Circle to study glaciers, writes a song that becomes a smash hit, and temporarily tries on other lives that she had formerly rejected. The plot, for the most part, is engaging, and we root for the heroine to find herself before it is too late. However, "The Midnight Library" is a bit too reminiscent of other novels with similar themes, and the tale loses steam as it progresses towards its predictable and conventional finale.
    • 4/5
      "In the Midnight Library you can't take the same book out twice."
      Feeling useless and unloved, Nora Seed attempts to end her life through an overdose. Instead she finds herself in a library managed by Mrs. Elm, a school librarian who was kind to Nora in her youth. Mrs. Elm explains that all the books are stories of Nora's life that diverge from different decisions she made during her life.  Nora is allowed to experience her life in different universes until she finds one where she is content.

      Nora enters a life where she actually married her ex-fiance Dan and they run a country pub, a life where she joined her friend Izzy in Australia, a life in which she remained committed to competitive swimming and became an Olympic medalist, and a life where she followed her dream of becoming a glaciologist, among several others.  The rules of the library are a bit unfair as Nora is plopped into situations with no memory of the life that got her to this point or even the people she's supposed to know.  Even in the most satisfying life, Nora notices negative changes in the lives of people she knows (shades of It's a Wonderful Life) and feels like an imposter.

      The ending of this novel is quite predictable, but nevertheless it is an inspiring story of embracing the life one has, and a great take on the multiverse theory.
    • 3/5
      Didn’t love it, didn’t hate it. Interesting concept but find it dubious that she would be wildly successful in all the other lives she sampled.
    • 5/5
      The Midnight Library is written by Matt Haig.
      I couldn’t possibly explain this book and how wonderful it is to read it. So I included a synopsis.
      “Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
      In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.”

      I found this book to be brilliantly written, interesting, provocative and introspective.
      *****
    • 3/5
      You can think of this as a 2020s remix of "It's a Wonderful Life," except that instead of getting to see what her life would be like if she had never been born, our protagonist Nora Seed gets to experience an endless number of lives that she might have lived if she'd made different choices along the way.

      The moral of the tale has likewise been updated to reflect today's FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) obsession - instead of "no man is poor who has friends," the lesson here is "don't spend so much time regretting all the opportunities you may have missed out on that you forget to recognize the opportunities you've been given." Because (Haig wants us to understand) happiness, friendship, love, laughter, fear, and joy aren't trim packages that you have to special order - they come included as part of life's base model.

      In fact, this whole thing reads more like something from the "This Book Will Save Your Life" genre rather than a novel, even accounting for the magical realism (the alternate lives take the form of books in a metaphysical library) - which isn't necessarily a knock, just an observation. Nora's a bit of sad sack, but not unrelatable, and it's fun to watch how each of her alternative lives plays out. And if these alternative lives come off as a little improbably glamorous, that's just Haig keeping things interesting.

      If you're the type that enjoys books that come with a side of affirmation, this is made for you; if you're looking for a pleasant read, you could do worse. Not my particular cup of tea, but I can see why others might perceive this as a whole meal.
    • 4/5
      Ultimately a good, if a bit cliche, book. Definitely needs a warning for suicide and a lot of depression talk, and if you have anxiety, some of the other lives definitely will be hard to read (or you could be like me and do some skimming instead). Overall, I found this an enjoyable read. Some people compare it to other media, and I'm sure there are parallels and similarities- Haig is hardly the first to have the idea of seeing what would happen in other lives or if something was different- but I don't think it's a negative thing on its own. It does what it sets out to do, and is well written enough to be an easy read for the most part.
    • 4/5
      Please don't let the tags of suicide or depression deter you from reading this book. It is ultimately a book with a positive message, reminding us all of the fact that in this great and infinite universe, we matter.
    • 3/5
      I might have enjoyed this story more had I read Reasons to Stay Alive. As it was, the sequential exploration of different lives that Nora Seed (the main character) sampled while existing in a liminal space was clunky and unsatisfying.

      For my enjoyment, I disliked that Haig dropped his suicidal, unhappy character, smack dab as she was when she tried to commit suicide, into these alternate realities. She was able to choose different choice of 'what ifs' from her past life events. Of course she'd flounder around and not fit in or have a clue how that life had developed.

      The book's narrative journey went from life to life until the not-so-surprising ending. The dénouement was sparse on details and would have been a more positive story about Nora's life had the story shown promise that she was going to meet the person she was so happy about in one of her last journeys.
    • 4/5
      A reason to live might not always present itself in the way you expect. Only in the midnight library can you defeat your regrets and live life.
    • 4/5
      I actually loved this book until I got to the end. I listened to the audiobook and I thought the narrator did a great job of making Nora come to life. I guessed the ending right away, all the while hoping that it wouldn't actually turn out to be the ending. There was so much potential for a more poignant completion to the novel; instead we were hit with self-help phrases and everything tied up in a neat bow. For me, the ending felt completely different than the rest of the book, almost as if the author was lecturing the reader. It completely took me out of the story and was a disatisfying way to end an otherwise engaging read.
    • 5/5
      This book is spectacular! Fantasy, romance, life and death stakes, fabulous characters, and a knock-out ending. Don’t let the beginning fool you into believing the story of a depressed suicidal young woman will be totally dark.
    • 3/5
      The MIDNIGHT LIBRARY offers a great and promising premise, yet moves incredibly too slow.
    • 1/5
      Wasn't sure what I was expecting when I began reading this book. But it certainly wasn't what I got. I had recently received a lung cancer diagnosis with just 12-18 months to live. Libraries have always been my go-to place for comfort and revitalization. This book was not it. And I am sorry I wasted my time on reading this.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like this book - I had high hopes based on his 'Reasons to Stay Alive.'

      It started out very intense and relatable, I almost thought a trigger warning would have been a good idea. Then it became awkward, painfully awkward, and it ended rather heavy handed sappy self-helpy.

      It definitely wasn't for me.
    • 4/5
      What if you had the ability to go back through your past life, change certain decisions, and then live that new life? Nora's life is falling apart and as she contemplates suicide, she visits the Midnight Library and Mrs. Elm, the school librarian who was kind to her years ago. She has a chance to revisit her old regrets and plop into the life that would have resulted. Predictably, she discovers that her old life was not so bad and that with a few tweaks she can live happily as she was.
    • 4/5
      Intriguing premise. Sticks with me even a week later- what might any of it lives Been- she would we be any different in a different life
    • 4/5
      Let me start off by saying I loved the premise of this book. It was a simple, fun, and "life-affirming" (as everyone seems to call it) storyline that made it easy to fall into. That said, I had some issues.

      First, I'm undecided on the protagonist's character, Nora Seed. She seemed a little on the selfish side, at times (but then aren't we all?). I do appreciate the *potential for* complexity of her character, but I don't think it was fully achieved in this story.

      Second, while the story started off strong, it felt lacking in something when all was said and done. I think more could have been done with the characters, and the clichés could have been a little less heavy-handed. It needed a little more polishing before going out the door.

      3.5 stars is a solid rating, for me, I think.
    • 3/5
      Nora Seed is depressed. She is fired from her dead-end job, her best friend and brother are both ignoring her, and her cat dies. So she swallows a bottle of anti-depressants seeking oblivion. Instead she ends up in a library with infinite shelves of books, overseen by her school librarian, Mrs. Elm. Mrs. Elm tells her that she is not quite dead yet and has the opportunity to experience other possible lives to try and find one that she would prefer to her "root" life. Each book is a different life, each the result of a different choice she could have made, big or small. So Nora begins trying out different lives: what if she had married Dan after all, what if she had continued swimming and went to the Olympics, what if she had stayed in her brother's band and they made it big, what if she had become a glaciologist, etc. After each life, she returns to the Midnight Library and reports to Mrs. Elm what she has learned.

      This book didn't work for me. I found it lightweight, internally inconsistent, and smarmy. It was like reading a self-help book disguised as a novel. For me, the idea that all Nora needed to do to treat her depression was a few quick self-realizations—I can be anything I want to be! I have the capacity for any number of careers, relationships, and lifestyles! I am not the cause of other's failures!—demeaned the seriousness of the mental illness. Others find the book inspiring, so your mileage may vary.
    • 5/5
      This was really very special to me. I loved this book and I feel it will become my main, 'Have you read The Midnight Library? No?!?! Oh, you just have to. Here, I happen to have a copy in my bag...go ahead, start reading it now. I'll wait' book.
    • 5/5
      I kept seeing this book as a favorite on reviews so I picked it up at the library. I read it and had to order a copy as I liked it so much.

      It's a page turner which reminded me of the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life," where the main character, Nora is ready to give up with regrets and then meets a librarian - more like an Angel - that shows her the various lives that were possible. The pages are mixed in with words of wisdom including a quote from Socrates that made me pause: "True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing." As Nora is given a glimpse of each life, she learns more about herself. It's easy to guess the end but the worthy part is reading the words of inspiration which is needed right now. Life can be like a game of chess. The author notes, after eight moves on the board, there can be 280 billion positions.

      There is so much we don't understand. While this book doesn't have the answers, it makes you think about what's outside the box. This is one of the few books I will reread.