The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don't want to attack this book too much, as it seems that it is very important to many people. I definitely don't hate it; it moves along quickly, I liked the basic story, and agree with the entire "It's a Wonderful Life" style moral that life is worth living, something that many people have benefited from while reading it.

That being said, there are at least two huge problems with this that, if you notice them, might ruin or greatly lessen your enjoyment of the book.

The first is a gigantic plausibility problem, which I could let slide for the sake of storytelling, though a minute's thought makes the entire novel silly. The second is that the universe (well, actually multiverse) as depicted in this novel is unbelievably horrific, and the heroine of the novel engages in repeated and blatant acts of evil without any qualms of conscience as to the harm she is doing.

Spoilers from here out...

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First off, it is not conceivably possible that you could drop into another person's life, especially someone who's job requires years of training and it not be immediately obvious that something was wrong. Someone should have rushed this woman to an emergency room to see if she had had a stroke or a brain tumor or early onset dementia. I'm not kidding. My father died of a brain tumor, and forgetting little things like she does repeatedly in this book was the first sign that something was wrong. But at least he was still the same person. The author does try to come up with hand-waving explanations for why she is able to make this work, but it strains credulity beyond the breaking point to think that as she does this dozens of times that no one notices that she clearly is not well. At least in the TV show Quantum Leap, Sam had Ziggy to explain what was going on and who people were.

Second and more disturbing is that the multiverse, as depicted here, is an unbelievably horrific to live in and not the life-affirming place that the author is trying to portray. Nora, the protagonist, tries to commit suicide by overdosing and wakes in an infinite library. The librarian tells her that she can live other lives to see what would have happened if she had made other choices, and if she wants can choose to live a different version of her life.

But, each of these lives aren't just alternate realities, like that shown in "It's a Wonderful Life". These are literal other universes from the multiverse, each just as real as our own, and in each one, she takes over the life of the Nora from that universes. While it isn't 100% clear, it seems that while she is living that person's life, the other Nora is in a sort of suspended animation, and when Nora leaves to return to the library, that person is awoken and thrust into whatever situation that Nora has dropped them and has to just wonder what has happened to them over the past few hours, days, or weeks. Indeed, one would hope that these other Noras don't know what has happened to them, because the alternative, that they are conscious of their bodies and lives being taken over by a stranger is even more horrifying.

What the Nora who is jumping from universe to universe is doing can be seen quite clearly if you imagine it this way:
Suppose that Nora discovers that she has a twin sister, and that they were separated at birth and neither knew that this happened. So Nora grabs the twin, puts her into a coma, and takes over her life, with all that entails. So Nora is spending this twin's money. She has kidnapped her twin's child. She is taking her house, and her car. She is taking her husband, and I don't know how else to put this other than to say that each time she and that husband would have sex, she is engaging in rape, since he could not possibly consent, since he thinks that he's engaging in sex with his wife. It doesn't matter that she "gives" these things back when she's decided that she doesn't want this life anymore.

And the more horrific thing of all, is that she is told, and we have no other evidence but that this is true, that she can permanently choose to live the life of any other Nora in any other universe. Which means what for the Nora from that universe, exactly? And worst of all, if you live in this multiverse, the better your life is, the more likely someone from an alternate universe is to want to take your life.
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