The Midnight Library, by Matthew Haig. A book review.
19 years before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat in the warmth of the small library at Hazeldene school in the town of Bedford.
‘Nora, dear, it’s natural to worry about your future' said the librarian, Mrs Elm, her eyes glimmering like sunshine and frost. Mrs Elm made her first move. A knight hopping over the new row of white pawns. ‘Of course you’re going to be worried about the exams, but you could be anything you want to be, Nora’.
Nora pushed a pawn forward two spaces.
Thus starts the spectacular novel by Matthew Haig, one of the most imaginative and prolific English literary figures.
[Don’t panic if you aren’t one of my chess-obsessed friends. The novel is not about chess, although its first paragraph naturally hooked me.}
The powerful central conceit is an exploration of ‘what might have been’ in the life of Nora Seed, a character who increasingly came to regard her life as a series of missed chances, some relatively trivial, some very important, such as her decision three days before her marriage to announce to her distressed about-to-be husband that the wedding would now not go on ...