We have all had that moment of joyous realisation: if one small thing hadn’t happened, then our lives would have been so different. If I hadn’t got that Saturday job, then I wouldn’t have learned how to… or, if I hadn’t gone out that day then I wouldn’t have met… or, if I hadn’t had that teacher, then I probably wouldn’t have been so interested in their subject at school… The consequences of our actions, however small, can delight us.
If we feel sad about something, an aspect of our lives, however, then our choices and every decision we have made, can haunt us.
We are all busy chasing happiness. None of us more than Nora Seed.
Nora is stuck. She has just been fired from her job in a music shop. Her cat has been run over. She is all alone in the world. She teaches piano to one student. She feels as though she has reached rock bottom, and she tries to kill herself.
But she is saved. By the Midnight Library: a place filled with books – each book telling the story of a different life of hers – the path not taken. And she gets the chance to go through each life and experience it.
In a story that crosses the feel-good greatness of the film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and the many different ways one character can live her life in Kate Atkinson’s ‘Life After Life’, we are reminded of how precious life is.
Nora, we learn, was a talented musician and she was in a band. But she also had a keen interest in glaciers as a schoolgirl. And she was a fantastic swimmer.
So what if she hadn’t given up on her music band? What if they had made it big?
Well, she finds out. Nora gets dropped onto a stage in Brazil before thousands of fans who have gathered to hear her play. While doing an interview for a podcast she finds out that, in this life, she has dated her Hollywood heartthrob actor. A fan approaching her with a Sharpie pen and asks for her signature so they can have it tattooed onto them, is just something that happens most days for her here.
What if she had pursued the life a professional swimmer?
She finds that out too, as Nora Seed OBE, just before she’s due to appear as a Guest Speaker. It’s always an amusing part of the story, as Nora gets plunged head-first into the middle of her new/different/alternative life. After a quick online search of herself, she gleans that she has already won a gold medal at the Olympics, and she is regularly on TV doing the coverage of swimming events for the BBC.
She gets to see herself in lots of guises. “In one life she was an aid worker in Botswana. In one life a cat-sitter. In one life a volunteer in a homeless shelter. In one life she was sleeping on her only friend’s sofa. In one life she taught music in Montreal.”
Each time, however, she feels frustrated to find that she is not entirely happy. She comes to realise that she feels like an imposter in all of these lives, and that her original life (or ‘root-life’) is her most honest one, however disappointing that is to admit. Until she experiences the feeling well-known to James Stewart in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ – she sees her piano student getting arrested in a shop. Without her there to teach him, he has opted for a more rebellious-route. She doesn’t realise what an impact she has made on his life until then.
It’s a great, feel-good read, with some lovely lines: “Where there were books, there was always the temptation to open them.” Powerful phrases like: “Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was then the door closed and locked behind you.” And: “What sometimes feels like a trap is actually just a trick of the mind.”
I highly recommend The Midnight Library. Everyone will appreciate its magic and sparkle – much needed by all of us, I think!
The Midnight Library is published by Canongate Books on 13th August 2020. I was very grateful to receive my copy from the publisher to review.
