A few years ago, my book club read "The Midnight
Library" by Matt Haig. A lot of people really love this book. I understand
why, since the book addresses the issues of depression and suicide and emerges
with a strong message of choosing to live in the face of adversity. Haig
himself has faced psychological issue, so the book is clearly quite meaningful
to him and many fans.
However, there is a huge, huge problem with the universe or
multiverse in the novel that, for me anyway, completely overwhelms the
story.
The plot involves a young woman, Nora Seed, who decides to
end her life. She wakes in the titular library, where a librarian explains that
she can choose any book from the infinite number of books and live the life of
that Nora from that life story. So she begins choosing lives to live and takes
over the lives of these other Noras.
When we read this book, I tried to explain the moral problems
at the heart of the story, but my fellow book club members, by and large,
didn't agree with me that even existed, or if it did, that it was all a dream
anyway.
So, it occurred to me to check with ChatGPT to see if I was
wrong or if the problem really did exist.
This is a lightly edited transcript of that conversation. My
input is in the blue, right aligned text, and ChatGPT is on the left.
I occasionally insert a point into ChatGPT’s answers in
square brackets to explain points that might not be clear, like this: [Brn – explanatory
point here.]
Obviously, there are spoilers
ahead, and this involves abstract discussions of SA and consent, so be warned.
Has anyone ever noticed that in
the book "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig, the main character, by
taking over the lives of other versions of herself, is in engaging in
incredibly immoral behavior? She is basically stealing (the money and resources
of the Noras from other universes), kidnapping (when those women have children)
and, I don't know how else to put this, but engaging in sexual assault when she
sleeps with the partners of the other Noras from other universes, since those
partners could not possibly consent, because they do not know that this is a
different person?
Yes. You are definitely not
the only reader who noticed this, and remarkably, I found a Goodreads
discussion from about five years ago that raises almost exactly your
objection: the questioner asks about the ethics of Nora displacing another
Nora, taking over her life, and having sex in circumstances involving a
“technically non-consenting” body. Several readers agreed that the book largely
ignores the implications.
I think you've identified a
genuine philosophical problem with the novel's premise, although I'd separate
the issues a little.
The fundamental question is whether
the alternate Noras are independent persons. The novel strongly encourages
us to regard these alternative lives as real enough to matter: they have
histories Nora doesn't remember, relationships she didn't build, skills she
hasn't acquired, and consequences that continue beyond the instant she arrives.
At
least one review makes the same observation: the displaced Nora apparently
disappears while the visiting Nora occupies the life and subsequently returns
without remembering what happened.
If we take that ontology
seriously, the ethical consequences get pretty disturbing.
Money and property: I'd
call this less straightforwardly theft than unauthorized control of
someone else's property. Visiting Nora spends money, uses possessions and can
presumably make financial decisions belonging to a person whose life she has
suddenly commandeered. It's especially strange because legally the money
belongs to "Nora Seed" [Brn - the full name of the main character]—but
morally, the consciousness making the decision isn't the Nora who earned it or
made the commitments surrounding it.
Children:
"Kidnapping" isn't quite the right category because she isn't
necessarily taking the children anywhere. But the underlying problem you see is
real and arguably worse than the terminology suggests. She is temporarily replacing
their mother. In the Ash-and-Molly life [Brn: Ash is the husband of an
alternate Nora, and Molly is their (alternate Nora and Ash) daughter together],
for example, visiting Nora receives the trust and affection that Molly has
developed toward her Nora. The child has no idea that the person
interacting with her has effectively appeared minutes or hours ago and doesn't
remember raising her.
And sex presents the
sharpest consent problem. I think your analysis is philosophically quite
strong. Suppose Ash consents to sex with the woman he believes is his wife—the
Nora with whom he has developed a relationship, shared memories, commitments, and
intimacy. The visiting Nora knows that she isn't psychologically that person
and deliberately doesn't tell him. Whatever legal label one would attach to
that hypothetical science-fiction situation, his informed sexual consent is
plainly compromised. He has consented on the basis of a fundamental fact
about his partner's identity that isn't true.
There's an interesting analogy
to stories involving body-swapping, clones and impersonation. If A inhabits B's
body and has sex with B's unsuspecting spouse, the fact that A possesses B's
physically identical body doesn't resolve the consent problem. The spouse is
consenting to B, not merely to B's body.
And The Midnight Library
makes this particularly uncomfortable because Nora herself knows what's
happening while everyone around her doesn't.
But there's a possible
defense of Haig
There is another
interpretation, and some readers make it explicitly: there aren't really two
Noras. One
Goodreads respondent to this criticism argues that these aren't other people's
lives at all; they're Nora's own possible lives, and points out that Nora
eventually begins recovering memories belonging to the life she's inhabiting.
On that interpretation, the
Midnight Library isn't literally transporting one independent person into
another independent person's body. It's allowing the same underlying Nora
to instantiate a different possible biography. Her initial lack of memories
would then be an artifact of the Library rather than evidence that she's
replaced another conscious person.
That solves quite a lot.
But I don't think it solves
everything, because the novel's mechanics make the distinction frustratingly
ambiguous. If alternative Nora was conscious five minutes before root-Nora
arrived and will become conscious again five minutes after she leaves, then
we've got something very much like possession. If alternative Nora
simply is root-Nora under a different set of possible circumstances,
then we have something more like metaphysical continuity of identity.
The book wants, I think, the second
interpretation emotionally while frequently depicting something that looks like
the first interpretation narratively.
That's probably why the problem
jumps out at some readers.
One recent review describes Nora as essentially "body-snatching" her
alternate selves and making decisions on their behalf before disappearing;
another describes remaining permanently in an alternate life as effectively
overwriting the Nora who originally lived it.
And there's an especially
uncomfortable implication of the ending of the Ash/Molly life. Nora seriously
considers staying permanently. If the alternate Nora is an independently
conscious person, then visiting Nora isn't merely borrowing her life anymore.
She is contemplating permanently eliminating her and taking her husband,
daughter, home, career, friendships and entire future.
At that point the moral issue
becomes much bigger than theft or deception. It becomes something awfully close
to killing one person in order to assume her identity.
I suspect Haig doesn't pursue
this because The Midnight Library isn't really intended as rigorous
multiverse science fiction. The alternate universes are primarily a literary
mechanism for examining regret: Would I actually have been happier if I'd
made a different choice? An academic treatment I've
found similarly reads the alternate lives principally as philosophical devices
through which Nora moves from lives shaped by others' expectations toward an
understanding of her own life's possibilities.
But once an author makes those
possible lives sufficiently concrete—giving them spouses, children, careers,
memories and apparently continuous consciousness—the metaphor creates ethical
consequences of its own. And I think you've put your finger on one of the
novel's most interesting unexamined problems: Haig asks us to care deeply
about the moral value of Nora's life while never really asking us to care about
the moral value of all the other Noras whose lives make her journey possible.
Thank you, I'm so relieved that
others could see this. When we read this in my book club, everyone else claimed
that I was crazy... We discussed the idea that these weren't really happening
(that in effect she was hallucinating or dreaming), but I think that the text
of the novel doesn't support that, since she meets people in the alternate
universes that she doesn't know, but when she returns to her universe/body,
those people exist.
I think that's a particularly
strong piece of textual evidence against the "it's all happening inside
Nora's head" interpretation.
If the Library were simply
generating therapeutic hallucinations from information already available to
Nora, then it could straightforwardly be understood as a metaphorical device:
none of the alternate Noras is actually displaced, and consequently none of the
ethical problems we've been discussing exists. But, as you point out, Haig
gives Nora apparently veridical information that she did not previously
possess. When facts encountered in an alternate life correspond to facts in
the root world, the Library seems to have access to something outside Nora's
existing consciousness. That makes a purely psychological explanation
considerably harder to sustain.
There is still a possible
middle position: the Library could be supernatural [Brn: I should note that
Haig is an atheist, so that seems important info here] rather than
multiversal—it might somehow know real-world facts and construct experiences
for Nora without those alternative worlds literally existing. But that requires
adding a mechanism the novel doesn't clearly establish. If we're interpreting
the fictional world according to what Nora herself experiences, the alternate
lives are presented as realities she actually enters.
And that brings back the
ethical problem.
I think the other Nora's
continuity of consciousness is the crucial question. Imagine that alternate
Nora goes to sleep Monday night, root-Nora arrives Tuesday morning, lives in
her body for three days, and then leaves. Alternate Nora wakes up Friday with
no knowledge of those three days. During that interval root Nora has
potentially:
- interacted with her children and spouse;
- spent her money;
- made professional decisions in her name;
- disclosed information to other people;
- altered her relationships;
- consented to things on her behalf.
If that's what's happening,
saying "but they're both Nora" doesn't solve very much. They have
diverged biographies, memories, relationships and intentions. Philosophically,
they're different persons even if they share an origin and identical DNA.
[Brn – a lot of fiction gets this wrong: A good recent example was the Tom
Cruise movie Oblivion, where at the end of the movie, a clone of
Cruise’s character just picks up where his character left off, including
resuming a romantic relationship. But that clone is not the same character: he
doesn’t have the same memories and experiences. And to be honest, it is more
than a bit creepy how the movie handles it.]
The children make this
especially obvious. Molly's relationship isn't with some abstract
trans-universal entity called Nora Seed. It's with the particular woman who
has raised her. Visiting Nora hasn't raised Molly and initially doesn't
even know basic things about her. Yet Molly reasonably believes she's
interacting with her mother. That's a fairly profound deception even though
visiting Nora didn't create the situation.
The sexual-consent example then
follows from the same identity problem. Ash isn't consenting to sex with
"any consciousness that happens to occupy the body of Nora Seed."
He's consenting to intimacy with the particular person he understands to be his
wife. Whether contemporary criminal law could categorize an impossible
body-swapping scenario is a separate and rather artificial question; ethically,
the absence of informed consent seems difficult to escape…
There's a more basic literary
phenomenon at work: genre framing tells readers which questions they're
supposed to ask. The Midnight Library presents itself as an
emotionally earnest story about regret, depression, possibility and learning to
value one's life. Readers therefore tend to process the alternate lives as
therapeutic scenarios rather than applying the moral rules they would apply if
exactly the same mechanism appeared in darker science fiction.
Change nothing about the
mechanics but rewrite the story from alternate Nora's perspective, and I
suspect reactions would change dramatically:
Nora has a husband, a daughter
and a life she loves. Without warning she periodically loses consciousness.
During those periods, another woman inhabits her body, talks to her child,
sleeps beside her husband, uses her possessions and considers permanently
taking over her existence. Nobody around Nora knows this is happening.
Suddenly you've got an episode
of Black Mirror. 😄
That's why I think your
objection is more interesting than simply finding a "plot hole." It's
a case where point of view controls moral intuition. Because Haig keeps
us inside visiting Nora's consciousness, the other Noras naturally become possible
lives rather than people. But if the novel's metaphysics grants
those Noras independent existence—and I agree that there is substantial textual
reason to read it that way—the ethical implications don't disappear merely
because the narrative isn't interested in them.
Absolutely! I pointed the
problem of "where is the alternate Nora" while all this is happening
to my club and in my Goodread review. The best case scenario for those other
Noras is that they are in a kind of coma, but since some of the takeovers last
for extended periods of time, that isn't much better. Just imagine waking up
from a coma after several months and no one believes that you've been in
a coma. How many of these other Noras ended up being committed to hospitals?
The even more terrifying
possibility is that they are conscious during all this! That would be
enough to make someone insane. How could one ever trust their own perceptions
of reality again?
Yes—and I think you've
identified an even deeper problem than the consent issue. The novel never
really accounts for what the displaced consciousness experiences. Once you
insist on asking that question, almost every possible answer is disturbing.
There are basically four
possibilities:
- Alternate Nora simply ceases to exist while
visiting Nora is present. If she returns afterward, she's lost a chunk
of her life. From her perspective, she might be making breakfast one
instant and suddenly find herself weeks or months later, with everyone
insisting she'd been behaving normally the entire time. That's not exactly
a coma, because there would be no external evidence that she'd been
unconscious. It would look like an enormous episode of amnesia.
- Alternate Nora goes somewhere else while
displaced. That raises the obvious question: where? Perhaps she
visits another life herself—but the book, as far as I remember, gives us
no reason to think that's happening. If she simply spends months in some
unconscious limbo, that's horrific in a different way.
- Alternate Nora remains conscious but cannot
control her body. This is probably the nightmare scenario you're
imagining. She watches another consciousness speak through her mouth,
interact with her family, perhaps have sex with her spouse, make decisions
about her career and contemplate permanently taking over her life—and she
cannot communicate with anyone. That's essentially imprisonment inside
one's own body.
- There never was a separate alternate
consciousness. This is the cleanest solution morally: the visiting
Nora isn't displacing anybody because the alternate Nora isn't
independently conscious. But, as we discussed, the novel seems to make its
alternate worlds sufficiently real and autonomous that this solution
requires some fairly heavy metaphysical assumptions.
And your "coma"
analogy actually undersells how psychologically devastating option 1 could be.
Imagine returning after six months and discovering that you apparently:
- quit your job;
- reconciled with someone you'd fallen out with;
- changed your finances;
- had conversations you cannot remember;
- made promises you don't recognize;
- had sex with your spouse repeatedly;
- developed a different relationship with your
children.
Everyone around you possesses
memories of you doing those things. There are photographs, emails and
text messages proving it. Your spouse remembers conversations you never had.
Your child remembers things "you" said. And when you insist that none
of it happened to you, everyone has an apparently overwhelming reason to
believe that your memory is malfunctioning.
That's an extraordinary
epistemological horror story.
The hospitalization point
follows naturally, too. Someone presenting with months of missing
autobiographical memory and insisting that another consciousness had inhabited
her body would very plausibly be interpreted by the people around her as
experiencing a serious neurological or psychiatric problem. Even without
speculating about a particular diagnosis or outcome, she'd have virtually no
way to establish that her account was true.
And option 3 is worse.
Imagine alternate Nora is
conscious throughout the occupation. Initially she'd presumably conclude that
something had gone terribly wrong with her own mind: Why am I saying this?
Why can't I move my hands? Why don't I recognize what I'm saying?
Then she gradually realizes
that the other consciousness doesn't know things she knows.
Her daughter says something and
the person controlling Nora's body doesn't understand it. Her husband mentions
a shared memory and the visitor improvises. She gets lost in her own workplace.
She doesn't recognize friends.
At some point alternate Nora
could reach the terrifying conclusion:
That's not me. Someone else
is controlling me.
And nobody else can tell.
That turns The Midnight
Library into something remarkably close to cosmic horror.
There's also a nasty asymmetry
in the novel's moral structure. The protagonist is allowed to abandon a life
whenever she becomes uncomfortable with it. But the people inhabiting
that universe don't get the reciprocal choice. Ash doesn't get to decide
whether he wants this version of Nora. Molly doesn't get to decide whether she
wants a stranger temporarily substituting for her mother. And alternate Nora
certainly doesn't get to decide whether she wants her body and biography
borrowed.
That becomes particularly
striking when visiting Nora considers staying. From her perspective, the
question is something like:
"Could I be happy
living this life?"
From alternate Nora's
perspective, the question would be:
"Is this stranger going
to give me my life back?"
Those are radically different
stories.
And that's why I like your
thought experiment about the displaced Nora so much. It doesn't require
rejecting Haig's intended themes at all. The Midnight Library can still
be a story about regret, unrealized possibilities and learning to value one's
existing life. But its speculative mechanism accidentally generates another
story underneath it—one about personal identity, bodily autonomy and whether
one person's search for fulfillment can justify treating alternative versions
of herself as interchangeable.
There's actually a wonderful
horror novel hiding inside The Midnight Library: tell exactly the same
events, but from the perspective of the Nora whose life gets chosen.
I absolutely agree, that would make an excellent
horror novel.
I get why the novel is beloved by so many, and I
actually get the message of "life is worth living" that clearly has
really touched so many lives. But this is definitely one of those times where
once you see something you cannot unsee it.
Exactly. And I think it's
possible to hold both reactions to The Midnight Library at once: the
emotional argument can work even if the speculative mechanism falls apart under
scrutiny.
Haig clearly wants the
alternate lives to function rather like the visions in It's a Wonderful Life:
they allow Nora to discover that the lives she imagines as obviously better
would contain losses and complications she couldn't have anticipated. Read at
that level, the mechanism is subordinate to the message, and it's easy to
understand why the book has meant so much to people.
But It's a Wonderful Life
has an important advantage: George Bailey observes the alternate world.
He doesn't wake up inside the body of an alternate George Bailey and start
sleeping with alternate George's wife. 😄
That's the little conceptual
change that creates all these unintended consequences in Haig's story.
And once you've asked "Wait—where
did the Nora who was already here go?", it's almost impossible to
return to the intended reading. Every subsequent life generates questions the
novel doesn't want you asking:
"Does this Nora get her
body back when our Nora leaves?"
"Will she remember any
of this?"
"What happens to
everyone whose relationships visiting Nora has altered?"
"If visiting Nora
decides to stay, has the original Nora effectively died?"
The Molly situation is
especially hard to unsee because the novel wants Nora's developing love for her
alternate daughter to demonstrate that this life might genuinely fulfill her.
Emotionally, that's understandable. But viewed from the other direction, Molly
already has a mother. The protagonist hasn't discovered a daughter she
somehow lost; she's entered another woman's family and developed an attachment
to that woman's child.
There's something else
interesting about this as literary criticism. It illustrates the difference
between a plot hole and an unexamined implication. I wouldn't
really call this a plot hole. Nothing necessarily contradicts the rules Haig
establishes. The problem is that if you accept those rules and follow their
consequences farther than the novel does, you arrive somewhere profoundly
different from where the author wants to take you.
And sometimes those are the
most enjoyable things to discover in fiction. A plot hole is often just a
mistake. An unintended implication can open up an entirely different
interpretation of the story.
In this case, the intended
novel is:
"What if you could
experience all the lives you might have lived?"
But lurking underneath it is:
"What if every life you
might have lived already belongs to someone?"
That's a considerably
darker—and, to me, much more philosophically interesting—question.
There is something closer to a
plot hole, but is probably just more of an implausibility that, even though I
noticed it, didn't bother me as much, because I was willing to suspend
disbelief for the story. Nora repeatedly slides rather easily into other lives
without anyone really noticing too much was changed. I know that she picked up
memories the longer that she stayed, but some of the lives had careers that she
had absolutely no training for. That, and the fact that she did forget obvious
things that the real Nora of that place should have known actually made me
think that in reality, root-Nora would have likely ended up being examined for
something like a stroke or brain tumor or psychological issues. Haig tried to
address this a bit, but I just never bought that someone could fit in that
easily. If you compare it to the TV show Quantum Leap, for example, that show
addressed it by giving him a character who could explain things to him, helping
him fit in.
Yes — I think narrative
implausibility is a better description than plot hole. Haig does establish
mechanisms that are supposed to make it possible: Nora gradually acquires
memories, and the people around her tend to rationalize her odd behavior. The
problem is that those mechanisms don't seem remotely powerful enough for some
of the lives he puts her into.
And the Quantum Leap
comparison is excellent because that show recognized exactly the practical
problem Haig mostly handwaves away.
Sam Beckett has several
advantages Nora doesn't:
- Al can brief him on who people are, what
relationships he has, and what's happening.
- Ziggy can supply factual information about the
leapee's life.
- Sam retains his own substantial knowledge and
professional skills.
- The premise gives him a convenient excuse for
behaving strangely: people often interpret him as eccentric, confused,
stressed, etc.
- Most importantly, the episode usually gives him a
fairly short, specific task. He doesn't have to convincingly maintain
somebody else's entire life indefinitely.
And even with all that help,
Quantum Leap regularly makes Sam's ignorance a major source of
difficulty.
Nora gets dropped into
situations that are much harder.
Professional competence is
the biggest problem
Suppose you woke up tomorrow
with the autobiographical knowledge that you'd spent fifteen years becoming a
surgeon. Even knowing that you'd attended medical school wouldn't give
you the procedural knowledge necessary to perform an operation.
That's the distinction between declarative
memory ("I trained at this university") and various forms of procedural/skill
memory ("I know how to do this").
Some of Nora's alternate
careers would require enormous amounts of specialized knowledge and automatic
competence. Being supplied with occasional memories wouldn't plausibly
substitute for thousands of hours of training.
And other people would notice immediately
in many professions.
If an elite athlete suddenly
couldn't execute familiar techniques, or an academic couldn't remember their
own research, or a musician suddenly couldn't play at their established level,
"I'm having a strange day" wouldn't cover it for very long.
The social-memory problem
may be even worse
This is something fiction about
body swapping frequently underestimates.
Think about how much completely
trivial information you know about people close to you:
"Remember that
restaurant we went to in 2019?"
"Did you ever hear back
from Sarah?"
"Can you pick up the
thing Molly likes?"
"What did the doctor
say about Dad?"
A spouse could probably
generate dozens of questions per day whose answers depend upon shared
experiences.
Nora's response would
repeatedly be some variation of:
"Uh... remind me?"
Once or twice, that's ordinary
forgetfulness.
Twenty times before lunch is
alarming.
And there's an especially
revealing scene type in the novel whenever somebody tells Nora something she
obviously should know. Haig generally uses those moments to remind us
that Nora has entered an unfamiliar life. But realistically, the other
character should be far more disturbed than the reader is.
Your medical point is
exactly where this would probably go
Imagine your spouse wakes up
tomorrow and:
- doesn't recognize acquaintances;
- doesn't know where ordinary household items are;
- forgets major shared experiences;
- can't perform familiar professional tasks;
- asks basic questions about their own life;
- occasionally seems to acquire memories again.
You probably wouldn't conclude,
"They're acting strangely today."
You'd worry that something was
medically wrong.
And the suddenness would
make it particularly concerning. A dramatic abrupt change in memory, language,
recognition, coordination or personality can warrant urgent medical evaluation.
So in a realistic version of the story, some alternate-life visit probably ends
very quickly with:
"We're going to the
hospital."
Which creates a wonderfully
absurd Midnight Library problem.
Nora arrives in an alternate
life.
Ten minutes later:
"Why don't you remember
our daughter's teacher?"
"I'm just tired."
"What's my middle
name?"
"..."
"We're going to
A&E."
Then Nora becomes dissatisfied
with the life because she's stuck in a neurological ward and gets returned to
the Library. 😄
There's another problem with
the memory solution
It actually makes the
metaphysical issue we were discussing worse.
Where are those new memories
coming from?
If they're the memories of the
alternate Nora, then the Library isn't merely placing Nora into another version
of her body. It's apparently extracting information from the displaced
person's mind and transferring it into the visitor.
And if visiting Nora eventually
receives all of alternate Nora's memories and skills, at what point are
they still two different people?
That opens another whole
personal-identity problem that the novel understandably doesn't want to
investigate.
Why it nevertheless works
for many readers
I think you put your finger on
why this problem is easier to forgive than the ethical one.
It's a premise convenience.
Lots of speculative fiction
asks us to grant one implausible mechanism so that the story can happen. Quantum
Leap says, effectively, "Ziggy and Al can give Sam enough information
to function." Fine. Now we can get on with the episode.
The Midnight Library
says, "Nora will gradually receive enough of the alternate life's memories
to function." Also fine—provided you don't examine it too closely.
The ethical issue is different
because granting Haig his fictional mechanism doesn't make the problem
disappear. In fact, taking the mechanism seriously creates the problem.
So I can readily suspend
disbelief about:
"Could Nora
convincingly impersonate an Olympic-level version of herself?"
because the novel needs me to.
It's much harder to suspend
moral reasoning about:
"What happened to the
Olympic Nora whose body she just took over?"
because that's a consequence of
the premise rather than an obstacle to accepting it.
And Quantum Leap made a
particularly smart structural choice in this respect: Sam usually occupies the
role of someone else while visibly remaining Sam to the audience, and
the series builds the confusion and need for assistance into the entertainment.
Haig needs Nora's alternate lives to feel seamless enough that she can
genuinely contemplate staying in them. Consequently, the very difficulties that
Quantum Leap turns into story material are difficulties The Midnight
Library has an incentive to hurry past.
Your example of the spouse
reacting to a sudden change is exactly what happened to my father. He very
suddenly changed personality and forgot things (like how to get places,
something that surely Nora would have faced). My step-mother did immediately
take him to the doctor, where they discovered that he had a terminal brain
tumor. Having gone through that, even though I knew that it was just a book and
that it didn't matter, I really hoped that someone in the book would get her
some help, because Haig did a good job of making me care for her. The way
everyone just ignored her made me more worried about those alternate Noras,
since clearly no one in their lives cared enough about them to do anything in
that situation.
That context makes your
reaction to the novel much more understandable. I'm sorry you and your family
went through that with your father.
What you describe also points
to something I hadn't quite appreciated in our earlier discussion: for you, the
implausibility isn't merely "surely somebody would notice."
You've actually seen what it looks like when a person suddenly stops knowing
things that have always been effortless for them—and you've seen someone close
to that person recognize that the change itself is alarming.
The navigation example is
particularly striking. Knowing how to get somewhere familiar is exactly the
sort of mundane knowledge fiction can overlook because it isn't narratively
interesting. But an alternate Nora could wake up and not know the route to her
own workplace, where her child goes to school, which cupboard contains the
glasses, or which key opens which door. Those aren't obscure memories somebody
can casually forget in bulk. Put together with unfamiliarity toward people and
gaps in professional knowledge, they would make a sudden change quite
conspicuous.
And I think you've identified
why Haig's success at making Nora sympathetic can unintentionally make this
worse. Because you care about Nora, you want the people around her to care
about her too. When she behaves in ways that could indicate that something
is seriously wrong and the other characters mostly accommodate or overlook it
because the plot needs the experiment to continue, their lack of alarm can read
as indifference.
There's an especially sad
inversion in that. The book is trying to teach Nora that she matters to other
people—that her absence would matter and that her relationships have value. Yet
in the alternate lives, she can suddenly become profoundly confused about her
own life and the people closest to her often don't react with the degree of
concern you'd expect from someone who knows and loves her.
That also strengthens your
concern about the displaced Noras. Suppose the visiting Nora leaves and the
original consciousness returns. Now that Nora might have an enormous
unexplained memory gap. If everyone previously accepted the visitor's strange
behavior without seeking help, perhaps they'll similarly accept the returned
Nora's bewilderment. From her perspective, the people she trusts most would be
telling her about things "she" did that she has absolutely no memory
of doing.
There's a cruel irony there: the
better the visitor succeeds at impersonating Nora, the harder it becomes for
the returning Nora to convince anyone that something happened to her.
And this may explain why you
could forgive the technical implausibility while still feeling emotionally
unsettled by it. You weren't demanding medical realism from a fantasy novel.
You had already granted the premise. But Haig had succeeded in getting you to
regard Nora as a person worth saving. So when she displays dramatic changes
that, in your own experience, prompted someone who loved your father to seek
medical help immediately, the natural response isn't necessarily "this
plot is unrealistic."
It's "Why isn't anybody
taking care of her?"
That's actually a rather
poignant unintended tension for a novel whose central message is supposed to be
that a person's life matters.
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