The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library is a 2020 speculative novel by Matt Haig about a woman named Nora Seed who, after reaching a breaking point, finds herself in a mystical library that allows her to explore the infinite versions of her life and discover what makes it worth living. It was generally well received by critics.

The library is a liminal space between life and death where the clocks are frozen at midnight, and it is managed by a manifestation of Mrs Elm, the school librarian who was kind to Nora as a child. Mrs Elm explains that every book contains a different version of Nora's life, which is the mechanism by which the novel examines the choices that produced the life she actually had.

The book was a New York Times bestseller and appeared on the combined print and e-book fiction list in October 2020. Its subjects include the future life, regret, choice and decision making, and the novel is written as a series of experiments rather than as a single plot, because Nora's task is to try lives rather than to correct one.