The Midnight Library, book review. (Matt Haig)

There was a lovely moment when I neared the halfway point of this book, a light bulb moment if you will, when I didn't so much know how it would end but knew how it would end!

To clarify: the finer details were still a mystery of course and would be until the very last page, but the general premise, where Nora Seed (who had just lost her cat - dead - her job - economic downturn - hadn't heard from her best friend in ages and so, believed there was little else to live for) would end up. Whether she would find her perfect life, the one she should have lead from her first beginning - be it the fame of a world renown rock band, being able to hold an audience with the perfect rendition of a Mozart concerto, holding the world and Olympic record for the four hundred meters breaststroke, or surviving the extreme climes of the coldest places on earth as a glaciologist - I had the answer.

Although I was but halfway through, knowing what was going to happen - or at least thinking I did - did nothing to lesson my enthusiasm; if anything it help, fuelled me, pushed me to see if I was right, and when I found out that I was, again, it didn't matter, I felt no less cheated, it was exactly how it should have been and made for a better book.

With myriad scenarios at the author's disposal it could so easily have been different. He could have fallen by the wayside, been temped by vainglory and excess or dwelt on the pitiful and despair but instead he went with what in this humble readers opinion was, the right road. It was a bumpy one, there's no question about that, with many a precipice for our weary protagonist to have tripped and fallen down, but she didn't, she made it, made it to her final resting place, and there was just so much right about where that was.

The way Matt Haig writes here grabs you straight from the off ,and with short sharp chapters and Nora's contrasting lives of excess, fame, quiet solitude, helplessness, addiction and the very serious subject of loneliness, there wasn't a page turned that didn't reveal some new and intriguing facet of a life not lived and it became a very emotional journey.

You want Nora to live, to love, be loved, find her happiness, wherever that might lie but you want to shake her, too; shout at her for wanting to give up, but not once did I ever stop routing for her, through good decisions and bad I was loyal to the end because as I said at the beginning of this post, I had a sneaky suspicion I knew the outcome.

Thank you Matt Haig, for this book, which is my first taste of your work, for I truly enjoyed it and will be wholeheartedly recommending it to all. I will no doubt be acquiring your back catalogue over the coming months and look forward to whatever you come up with next.

Four star for The Midnight Library. An enjoyable but thought provoking book which, especially at this time of year, brings the very important subject of loneliness to the fore and it's just won the Goodreads book of the year for fiction, too, so go check it out; it does not disappoint.

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