The Midnight Library (2020) By Matt Haig

"The only way to learn is to live.”

My opinion has altered dramatically from the opening pages to the book's end. I felt, at first, that the book read like like teen fiction, or at least, as though it were written by a teenager. I struggled to continue on after only a chapter or two.

"Never underestimate the big importance of small things.”

I felt, there was no elegance to the description, and, in those opening pages, I still believe that. Those early stages tell you everything painfully clearly. The reader does next to no work for themselves. Every thought felt by the protagonist is expressed in the most mundanely clear way.

"We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility."

It did, however, grow on me quite substantially. It has a heart to it. Sure, it still has moments where the writing feels a little cliché and a little too simple in its style, but what makes this book grow on me so succinctly is its character.

"You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it."

Matt Haig's writing style seems to improve the deeper you get into the book. Where he initially seems lost on his character or at least in terms of their mind, by the end, he seems to know her intimately, which reflects in how the reader feels towards her too.

"And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you’re in."

I still feel that the book ventures a little too far into teen fiction, but it does manage to mature itself appropriately as the story increases in depth and development. This feels like a book that could change one's perspective on life in a positive way, and that is nothing to be trifled at.

"It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers."

Whether or not it changed my life, or my perception of life, is another matter entirely. That said, it is a book that I'm glad I kept reading. The opening may disappoint, in terms of my own personal enjoyment, but the emotion that Haig's writing provokes is determined and admirable.

"As Thoreau wrote, ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see."