Insights > What We’re Reading: Morgan Recommends “The Midnight Library”

What We’re Reading: Morgan Recommends “The Midnight Library”

Morgan Krasovich, architectural associate at Caddis Collaborative, highly recommends Matt Haig’s novel The Midnight Library.
Although it is a fantasy fiction book, it is light on fantasy – “it’s not dragons or witches,” Morgan says – and heavy on compelling story.
The main character, a British woman named Nora Seed, ends up in the midnight library, a space between life and death, where she explores different possibilities of what her life could have been. She is guided by her high school librarian, Mrs. Elm, a formative person in her life. Mrs. Elm is a mentor and guide, a wise leader.
Nora gets to go back and make different choices and see how those choices would have turned out. When she was fully alive, she spent a lot of time living in regret. Now in the midnight library, she goes through her Book of Regrets. She works through the decisions that she thought had changed her life for the worse.
It turns out that, with a lot of her regrets, her life wouldn’t have been better even if she had made different choices. For example, Nora regrets not pursuing a musical career. In the midnight library, she gets to try that, and she realizes that being a rock star isn’t what she thought it would be.
“I loved thinking about what it would be like if you could see all the ways that your life could turn out,” Morgan says. “A big part of it is realizing that no matter what decision you make, you’re still living your life, and you still get to make choices that affect your life.”
Nora’s exploration of the Book of Regrets also spoke to Morgan’s interest in reading. “I love reading books and being taken to a different world,” Morgan says. “So I loved seeing how Nora gets to try out all of these different worlds.”
“One of the big things Nora learns is that you can make different choices in the future,” Morgan says. “But there’s no reason to really regret where you are.”
“Every choice we make puts us on a different path,” Morgan adds. “I’ve always found that to be a really interesting concept. Each choice makes a big difference in where you are in life. It’s kind of scary if you think about it too much, and that was a big takeaway for me – not to get too wrapped up in in my mind. Part of life is just living it and appreciating things along the way. Yes, you could have made different choices, but you didn’t. So you have to make the best with where you are.”
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