I don't think that Matt Haig is the author for me. This is the second of his novels I've read. In both cases, I felt compelled to read them because people around me liked them so much, and both times, I was unimpressed. I feel a bit of an outsider.

My resistance to The Midnight Library is not the concept. I quite like books set in libraries, and library as afterlife (or limbo, I suppose) greatly appeals to me. Despite the sentimentality, there were times when I found Haig's narrative voice easy to sink into. And some of the lives Nora explored were genuinely interesting. I can certainly relate to having regrets and curiosity about what my life might be like now had circumstances been different. (Though with me, it's less "what if I was an Olympic swimmer?" and more "what if I hadn't grown up in a homophobic family and had felt supported enough to come out 15 years earlier?")

The problems I had with this book are ones this reviewer shares, especially the final one, which is a massive spoiler, so if you don't want to know the ending of the book, don't read the review.

Spoilers and discussion of suicide under the cut.

Spoiler

I just don't think that Haig's bootstraps approach to suicidal ideation is helpful. In fact, I think that it's irresponsible and even cruel to suggest that if you are suicidal or suffering from depression and anxiety, then you just aren't looking on the bright side enough, that you can get over it by being grateful just to be alive. To do so makes light of people's suffering.

Speaking from experience, being told to look on the bright side or to be grateful has never helped me through a period of suicidality. What helped wasn't some vague, glib concept of hope or potential, but having real, concrete things to live for. Sometimes it was thinking that my dog would be sad and confused if I disappeared and she didn't know why, so I needed to stay alive for her. Sometimes it was knowing that my loved ones would have to find my body, so I needed to stay alive so they didn't have to go through that. Sometimes it was getting to a point where the immediate situation I was in was going to change, and I felt like I could stick around to at least see if that helped. It was never just thinking that maybe things would get better somehow, and it was definitely never rehashing my every regret and thinking about how my entire life would be different if I had just made better decisions.