Review: The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"What did you think?"
That's the question I should answer while I am writing this. It's hard to say. I am not as good to write about that right now as I should. I am not reading enough during this period, so I do have not the right instrument for writing something about such a complex question here I know that this book has received a prize on Goodreads, but I didn't like it so much and I should have a good opinion to explain why if I am writing right here.
Also, I am not impartial (particularly) because each book for me has a timeline. Each book is associated with some events in my life. And when I think about the book, I can not stop thinking about what happened in my life while I was reading. And usually, books and life influence each other, but not this time, maybe because my life was so messed up while I was reading or maybe because the book is not so strong (and that's what I think most, but maybe I am avoiding the credits that my life has in it).
A book about choices, I mean what can be better than this when your life is messed up?
But it just wasn't helping me... at all. And when my life just started again in a way that I was liking, I just hated that I had to read this book that wasn't giving me the right strength. So I started reading it more because I was searching for a sign (a moment of real joy basically) that was telling me that I was doing the right thing. And when I was almost finishing it, I must say, it was almost helpful, It was better, but not so much, and at this point, I had already made decisions (or maybe life did it for me because you know... when you don't have the right guide with you, you just follow the flow), so I hated that I was reading this book also when the life was turning to be better because there were no big sings of it in the book ( and I was like: why, why you can not be good right now, just follow me).

But yeah, let's talk about what is actually in it, that I didn't like (and obviously what I liked), until now I just wrote about myself and what I felt (although I think it's important because you need to have the context when you read something and also who cares about what's inside a book when people can not actually feel it, maybe it's too subjective or maybe that's not the right book for people in a situation as mine despite what it's written in it).

The book is about this person that wants to die (that's like the starting point). This person has no reason at all for that. I mean, she has her reasons, but they are not big reasons that everybody can recognize as grave. They are most like "occidentals never been real problem" problems and most of them are just her choices. She decided to do what she didn't like and she can always change them, but she doesn't have the right push. This character makes sense for this kind of story because the point of the book is about making choices and living life (and it's not about war or things more dangerous where you have no choice), so makes sense that at the beginning she is like that because you need to see her development and maybe you can develop with her in the meanwhile. That's a good point, but she is simply terrible. If you have ever read a good book, maybe a classic book, you can notice how different the characters are. Also, characters that want to die for debatable reasons have something more than this character. Madame Bovary was not the best (ethical point of view) person, she had a real struggle and she was living it like it was something heavy but in a very egoistic way (not just a lazy way). Werther (Goethe) has no real problems, but he was living them as if they were something unbearable. He could notice that sometimes they were stupid, but he just can not control himself. I mean, I can not say to you how to live your emotions, I can not say: don't be depressed for yourself if you are not fighting for your life; I can not say to you how to live your emotions also for this kind of thing. But she is just lazy. When you read about her situation, you just don't feel it. Because she is not feeling it. She is "Yeah, that's it, I want to die". I mean, you can do what you want, but that's not a good character for me, what are you giving to me? No emotions, no struggle, no reasons to live (at the beginning at least). Also when she is starting to feel life, when she is starting something, she is just not really intriguing. She tries sometimes to enjoy what she is doing (or maybe sometimes there are just good things in the book that are enjoyable themself), but it's not so catchy.
It's just laziness and MAYBE lazy people can compare and be like "ok, that's me, I feel it". Maybe I am just not lazy. The character is boring for me. Sorry.

But let's talk about the writing. It's mediocre. Just mediocre. I think this is the same as a pop song, but for books, something like that, and maybe I am not for this kind of book. (I like pop songs by the way, how can you not like them). There are some good quotes. But a lot of mediocre dialogues. English is not my first language, but I just finished two months ago a book written by an American person who studied at Cambridge and when she started writing (her words, not mine), she wasn't good at it, she put effort into it. And you can feel it, the English was really good(but I am not good at it, so I can not really talk about that) but most important was that you could feel the effort. She was really enjoying writing well. That's not the case in this book, you can sense that maybe the author was enjoying writing it, but you can not see the effort, there is nothing spectacular, it's just good and flowing, nothing more.
And the metaphors... oh my goodness. The ones that are not quoted are just bad sometimes. I like the quotations, I like that the character knows about philosophy, it's the only good thing about her. Sometimes she also knows something about "science", not bad. And also sometimes there are inspiring sentences. But the metaphor is just not always good. There is one in particular that makes me crazy because it's almost totally wrong and it is recurring throughout the book. It's the one that is about life and chess. The game. The point of the metaphor itself could make sense: Life is like chess, you take decisions (and that's powerful), you make moves and then you have consequences; the choices you make are always important, but you can always take another one because there are a lot of combinations. That's more or less a good parallelism. But he didn't stop there. He made it a real thing in his book and I can not believe it. How can you build one of the main characteristics of your book about something simply wrong? Throughout the book, there are chess moves. I am not a real fan of chess, I am not a fanatic, I am just a player... for fun. But I know and I think everybody, who plays, does that not all the moves are equal. Yeah, probably you have a lot of possible moves (until you lose), but in the book, the characters say something like "Oh, you are in a very bad situation, but you have always another move, never surrender". First: that's not true as I said, at a certain point you just lose (and that's true also in life, sometimes you die, and not everything it's the same) and you have no legal moves then. Second: It's just wrong because if you lost all the pieces except your pawn (as literally, it's happening in the story while they are playing), you should surrender in chess. Maybe you have other moves to do (technically speaking you go forward with your pawn and yeah, it could become a queen, for sure and also you can probably move your king). But that's just not something you do in chess. Two reasons also here: 1) Sometimes it's just useless, there are good moves (in a mathematical sense) and bad moves, you did the bad moves, and it's not important that you can not predict all the possible results because they are almost infinite. There is a limited set of moves that are good moves, not all of them are the same and you just move only because you can, you will lose real fast. 2) It's unethical in chess to not surrender at a certain point. If you are with just a pawn and your opponent is in a good position, you simply can not win with all the possibilities in the world (and that's also math) IF the opponent doesn't become stupid randomly. So if you don't surrender, it's just like you are saying in a mathematical way that your opponent is stupid. So people surrender also if they have moves. That's just chess.
In the end, the point is: the metaphor is wrong and you are using it a lot. The metaphor is wrong because it's not true in chess and also is not probably true in real life. As I said, I think there are moves that are better than others, but just it's not easy as in chess to see them sometimes. So yeah, good point, you have an infinite number of possibilities and you should move if you can in real life, but don't banalize all the choices as they are the same and also don't use too much (and in a suche realistic wrong way) a not so solid metaphor throughout the book. I am being dramatic, It was funny to have something to argue in the book, you can use the wrong metaphor if you want, one time I read something like "All the metaphors are just lies well written" and that's probably true in a certain way. But in this case, was just too funny to not point it out.

I will not talk too much about the plot because I think nobody will read all of it with attention also there are some good plot twists in the book and I do not want to risk ruining maybe the only good thing that you can enjoy in the book.

By the way, I just want to finish on a good note and say something about my being impartial again. I know two people who also read the book and they liked it a lot. And I don't like them anymore so much (I barely know one of them, but I met the person when I was already hating this book and it was like "Oooh, this book, I like it" and I was "Now I understand why I don't like you". Hi, if you are reading, I am just being dramatic). I do not know if that can make me so wrong about the book in a not conscious way. Also, a lot of people who I told about this book (and that never read it) were like "Oooh, seems a good book". I do not why because I was probably saying shit about it, but people like it. Yeah, that's the world. Sometimes you just make your choices and you do not know why. But at least you tried


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