As I mentioned a couple of days ago, despite enjoying Matt Haig's The Midnight Library there was something about the novel, something I couldn't quite place, that bothered me. Now I've figured it out. It's the fact that his protagonist, Nora, is so gifted. In some of the various lives she is able to live, through the various volumes of possibility offered in the titular library, she is able to develop her talents for music and swimming and academic philosophy. Now it's true that she doesn't achieve great things in all the many lives she inhabits, but for a presumably Everyman (Everywoman? Everyperson?) character it's not bad going to win an Olympic medal and become an internationally famous rock star in just a couple of them.
I can see a point being made here about the possibilities involved in making full use of our talents, but this all seems more than a bit heavy-handed to me. And it conflicts with the celebration of simple ordinariness that lies at the heart of the story. Of course, that may be the point but for this reader it doesn't quite work.
I suppose that's the problem with any 'thesis-novel'. Once you interrogate the premises involved the work will start to wobble, and just to have a thesis is to invite interrogation.
Still think it's a good read though.
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