Matt Haig

   O singură bibliotecă. O infinitate de vieți. Care e cea mai bună?

   Undeva, la marginea universului, există o bibliotecă infinită de cărți, iar fiecare poveste din ele provine dintr-o altă realitate. Una spune povestea vieții tale așa cum e, alta spune povestea vieții tale așa cum ar fi fost dacă ai fi luat altă decizie într-un anumit moment. Toți ne întrebăm mereu cum ar fi putut să fie viețile noastre. Dar dacă am găsi răspunsul într-o bibliotecă?

   Atunci când Nora ajunge în această bibliotecă, are șansa să îndrepte lucrurile – o viață plină de durere și de regrete. Are ocazia să facă totul altfel și să-și dea seama cum ar putea avea viața perfectă. Dar lucrurile nu sunt tocmai cum și le imaginează ea… Curând, alegerile pe care le face o pun într-un pericol iminent.

   Înainte să expire timpul, trebuie să răspundă la o singură întrebare: care e cea mai bună cale de a-ți trăi viața?


   „Matt Haig e unul dintre cei mai imaginativi scriitori ai epocii noastre. În acest roman, povestea emoționantă e plină de învățăminte despre cât de important este să apreciem viața pe care o avem.“
The Independent

   „Fiecare carte de aici, fiecare carte din bibliotecă – cu excepția acesteia – reprezintă o versiune a vieții tale. Această bibliotecă îți aparține. Se află aici pentru tine. Vezi tu, viața oricui s-ar fi putut sfârși în feluri infinite. Cărțile de pe rafturi sunt viața ta, toate încep din același punct. Din clipa de față. De la miezul nopții. Marți, 28 aprilie. Dar aceste posibilități de la miezul nopții nu sunt identice. Unele se aseamănă, dar altele sunt complet diferite.“

Biblioteca de la miezul noptii

Dana

Teodora Nagy

2.5/5 The message was nice, the book was boring

Alexandra Rimniceanu 

Superba,se citeste repede ,a fost exact ce am avut nevoie in momentul de fata. Interesanta perspectiva de a privi universul. M am regasit in Nora Seed si mai ales m a motivat . Recomand oricarei persoane care s a gandit vreodata "ce ar fi fost daca?" .

Nona G

I'm that person who does not read stuff just because everyone does. I stopped doing that in my university years, when The Alchemist was all the rage. That book is so full of clichés that even then, at 19, I did not understand why people were praising it. But I guess first year law students think of themselves as philosophers and being intellectually superior and that particular book was somehow feeding this image.

Anyhow, since this is not a review of Coelho's idiotic novels, let me get into The Midnight Library. It won Goodreads' award for best fiction book and everyone in my Instagram feed read it, so it made it the perfect candidate for me to put in the pile of books I might consider reading maybe in 5-10 years. However, the title and the synopsis determined me to buy it and I do not regret the choice. I don't really know why it won best fiction book, since it is far from being what I consider great literature, but after all the Goodreads awards are mainly a popularity contest - and it is, in the end, far better than a lot of other books with high ratings that you can find here.

I have never found the idea of multiverses transposed into literature before. It would have not surprised me if this were a graphic novel, but as a piece of prose, I found it quite surprising. Even more so (and here's where the 4* are) because it doesn't just put all reason behind and immerse in fantasy as an excuse for the parallel lives, but it actually explains everything in physics terms. Am I glad now that I read Stephen Hawking's A Briefer History in Time! No, really, it would have been extremely easy to make this a fantasy novel with some philosophical musings thrown in, but Matt Haig worked to elevate the novel a notch and make it appeal to other types of readers as well. (Not that I have anything against fantasy, au contraire!)

The concept of the book is that we may live an infinity of lives, depending on the decisions we take at either point in our existence, and that no life is better or worse, each possibility being equally happy and sad. There is no perfection, so that's not what we should strive for; instead, we need to find our way and make a great living out of what we have, by actively making choices. We are the sum of our decisions. In the end, this is a book of philosophy, cleverly disguised in sci-fi.

It's a very easy read, despite tackling such heavy concepts. I loved the short chapters and the alert storytelling style, making this a very fast read. Nora Seed - the main character -, despite being quite unremarkable when the book starts, is the perfect character: she takes small things from each experience (life) she lives and actually evolves into a better version of herself, one who is capable, in the end, to make a vital decision.

Maybe we needed such a book in this year of craziness and confusion. It was, for sure, a sort of surprising band-aid for my soul.

Biblioteca de la miezul noptii

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