Second Chances or Thirds or Fourths or......

    Have you ever picked up a book in a store or browsed online and thought, 'That looks like an interesting read, I'll buy it.' Then you started to read it and wondered what you were thinking? That's exactly what happened when I started to read Matt Haig's The Midnight Library. From the start, I had trouble with it, mostly because I had no sympathy for the book's protagonist. I don't think I read more than 10 pages before I set it aside and read another book, then another three or four after that. Recently I picked it up off my bookshelf and remembered all the good reviews the book received. I wondered what had I been missing? I decided I would muscle through it if only to figure out what everyone else was seeing that I wasn't. 

    First, I should say, that I finally got it, though it took getting deep into the book before I did. I admit that I did like the strange premise from the beginning and that alone compelled me to keep going. If you haven't read the book you must be wondering, why the change of heart?

    So, here's the deal. The story focuses on a 30ish woman named Nora Seed who has pretty much wasted her life by making poor choices and living a life of regrets. She's on the verge of suicide when the book opens. (This is when I skipped out the first time I tried to read it.) Nora attempts to take her life when an odd thing happens. Instead of dying she is transported to The Midnight Library full of an infinite number of books each containing an alternate life where she made different choices and lived different lives. Can you imagine? Nora is given the opportunity to try out countless different lives she could have lived and in so doing, undo her regrets.

    And this is where I got hooked. Nora tries out multiple lives and in each life discovers it wasn't what she regretted not doing after all. Things weren't what she envisioned they would be. Each had its downfalls, creating its own set of complications. Yet in each one, she learns a lesson, becomes a little wiser, and with that lesson returns to The Midnight Library to try out another life. I was fascinated by the very idea of second or third or multiple additional chances. 

    How many of us haven't thought back on our lives and wondered -- what if I took a different path? How different would my life and happiness be? What if I took the chance to study at that school halfway across the country that I'd dreamed of attending my whole life, but didn't? What if I took a different major in college? Studied art instead of accounting? Or agricultural science instead of engineering? History instead of child development? What if I learned to ski or surf or climb mountains or fly a plane? What if I took that job in New York or Santa Fe or New Orleans or Tallahassee or Montana? What if I married that man or woman I thought was the "one" but got scared and broke up with him/her instead? Would I have been happier? What if I had kids? Or didn't have kids? The questions and possibilities are endless, aren't they? And that is exactly the point of Matt Haig's novel. In the end, it's about gaining insights and perspective and discovering for oneself the best way to live one's life. Because really, none of us really know the best way until we live it, do we?