
“Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived.”
What's in this book
- Matt Haig's 2020 philosophical-fantasy novel about an infinite library between life and death
- Each book is an alternate life Nora could have lived if she had made a different choice
- 288 pages, finishable in a weekend, with a gentle philosophical-fiction register
- New York Times bestseller for more than two years; Goodreads Choice winner 2020
- Carey Mulligan audiobook is the definitive audio production
- For readers of Klara and the Sun, Never Let Me Go, and contemporary literary-speculative fiction
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Matt Haig built his career writing about mental health with radical honesty. The Midnight Library is perhaps his most hopeful work - a fantasy novel about a woman named Nora who finds herself in a library containing every book of every life she could have lived.
The premise is simple but the execution is rich. Haig uses each alternate life Nora visits to explore questions of regret, identity, and what it really means to live well. It is funny, sad, and ultimately deeply uplifting.
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