We’ve all had regrets. Played the “what if” game. Wondered what life would be like if only we had done X instead of Y.

But there are no re-dos in life. Or are there?

The journey Matt Haig takes readers on in The Midnight Library (Random House, 2020) is all about alternative universes where parallel lives are going on at the same time as our “root life”—the one we are really living.

Nora Seed, the main character, is not satisfied with her life, wanting to end it. Before death she finds herself in the midnight library where every book is a version of her life if she had made a different decision. Some choices are monumental, some not so much. But they all put her on a different trajectory.

As with much in real life, the grass is usually not greener. In other words, when Seed experiences other choices, she wasn’t satisfied with that life either.

Or maybe the author didn’t let his main character fully live that life. She was always an outsider possessing the body/life of this other version of herself while she kept a connection to her “real” life. That made me wonder if she was even capable of knowing if she would have liked another life.

If you think too much while reading this book, it’s easy to poke holes in the rationale of if all. If you just go with it, it’s interesting to think about what it would be like to pick another course of action and to live out that version of your life.

In many ways this book was simplistic, in that all you have to do is figure out your regrets are not that big of a deal and that your life does have meaning. It’s a feel good book in that way. But it doesn’t seem all that realistic. The author doesn’t seem to understand the depths of depression.

But this is a novel, so it’s all make believe.

I liked the premise of the book much better than I liked the book.