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Summary: Nowhere to Land
Nora finds herself back in the library. The lights in the library are flickering and everything is falling apart. Nora is distraught. She begs Mrs. Elm to send her back to the life with Ash and Molly, or as close to that life as possible. Mrs. Elm says it doesn’t work that way and that it’s possible her root life is ending. The books are all catching on fire. Nora needs to get out of the library. Her watch starts keeping time again. Mrs. Elm gives her a pen and tells her to find a specific book that will get her out. She directs her where to go and tells Nora to live.
Summary: Don’t You Dare Give Up, Nora Seed!
Nora thinks she’s going to die. She sees her watch moving and thinks everything is over. Mrs. Elm yells at her not to give up. All the books are burning, and debris is falling on her. She makes it to the book of her root life and it’s blank. She tries writing various sentences and none of them work. She finally writes “I AM ALIVE.” The Midnight Library disappears.
Summary: Awakening
Nora wakes up in her root life, sick, delirious, in pain, and vomiting. She feels worse than she ever has, but she knows this is the life she wants to be in. She calls out for help. She makes it to Mr. Banerjee’s door and asks him to call the ambulance. She then collapses in front of his door.
Summary: The Other Side of Despair
Nora finds herself in the hospital. She keeps the Midnight Library to herself, wagering that it would be suspect to discuss it in a psychiatry ward. She looks out the window and feels grateful for her life. She goes online and deletes her suicidal social media posts and posts a new one.
Summary: A Thing I Have Learned (Written By A Nobody Who Has Been Everybody)
This chapter contains Nora’s social media post. In it, she talks about how easy it is to regret the life one hasn’t lived and to spend time mourning missed opportunities. She says it’s also easy to overlook the beauty of the life one does have. She says that regret itself is what makes life difficult to live. Nora talks about how much despair she had just yesterday. She compares this to the amount of hope she has now and says all she wants, no matter what happens in her life, is to live.
Summary: Living Versus Understanding
Joe visits Nora in the hospital, and she’s very happy to see him. He tells her that she can’t leave him and that he needs her. He apologizes for the troubles in their relationship in the past. She thanks him for trying to save her in the river when they were teenagers.
Izzy messages and says she wants to catch up soon. Nora feels flooded with joy.
Her brother takes her home and she encourages him to get in touch with someone he just met at the gym, Ewan. Without explaining that she knows Ewan is Joe’s husband in another life, Nora tells Joe that he has to ask out Dr. Ewan Langford. Joe is floored that Nora knows his full name and his job. He asks how she knew. Nora says that he doesn’t have to understand life. He just has to live it.
Nora is happy to see Mr. Banerjee. She feels filled with joy and wonder to be alive.
Summary: The Volcano
In her apartment, Nora sees her root life through new eyes. She feels renewed and like she’s successfully left The Book of Regrets to the ashes of the past. She gets a call from Leo’s mother Doreen and is thrilled that Leo will be continuing piano lessons.
In the past, Nora thought she was a black hole. But now she reflects that perhaps she is a volcano. Volcanos cause destruction, but in their wake, great forests can grow. She caused a lot of harm, perhaps to herself most of all, but she thinks a new forest can grow within her.
Summary: How It Ends
Nora goes to visit Mrs. Elm, and they play chess together. Mrs. Elm starts to express regrets about her life and Nora expresses how kind Mrs. Elm always was to her. They begin to play, and Mrs. Elm reflects that you never know how the game ends. Nora then ponders her next move.
Analysis
This section explores Mrs. Elm as a symbol of Nora’s higher self. Before Nora left the life she loved, she knew on some level that she could not stay. But when she returns to the Midnight Library, she’s filled with resistance and denial as she tries to fight her way back to the life she knew wasn’t hers to keep. In the conversation between Mrs. Elm and Nora upon her return to the Midnight Library, Mrs. Elm expresses all Nora knows but cannot accept: that she can’t return to the perfect life because it wasn’t right for her, that if she doesn’t fight her way back to her root life she may die, and that she has discovered that she wants to live. When Nora makes her way to the book of her root life and is about to return, she glimpses Mrs. Elm standing without fear in the library as it collapses. Mrs. Elm disappears just as Nora reemerges into her life, suggesting that Mrs. Elm becomes a part of Nora or perhaps has always been so. After her experience in the library, Nora becomes more in tune with her purpose and what she wants for her life, and when she plays chess with the real Mrs. Elm, it's Nora who coaches Mrs. Elm through her regrets. As their names suggest, Nora Seed is growing into a flourishing elm tree, becoming her higher self. Nora has evolved throughout her journey and now embodies the part of herself that knew the answers all along.
The destruction of the Midnight Library represents Nora’s decision to finally commit to life. The Midnight Library represents a liminal space between life and death. In this space, Nora is able to explore infinite possibilities, let go of long-held regrets, and have some fun along the way. However, after a point, the more Nora travels through these lives, the less connected she is to life itself. In the Midnight Library, she starts to lose her way and becomes as unmoored as she was in her root life. The destruction of the library, then, represents Nora’s act of finally letting go of all the unlived lives and committing to the one life she’s been given. This is not a resignation or a failure. Instead, by allowing all the regrets and alternate versions of herself go to ash, Nora is able to return to her life with a clearer sense of what is possible.
In the final chapter, the game of chess represents the endless possibilities contained in a single life. Nora meets the real Mrs. Elm for a game of chess in the final chapter, which is called “How It Ends.” The novel ends as the game has just begun and the pieces are all on the board. This setup hints at the idea that one doesn’t need a library of infinite lives to experience a true sense of possibility. Contained within it, each mortal life has as many possibilities as a new game of chess. Just as chess would be no fun if the players knew from the start how the game ended, Nora learns that she cannot predict where her life is going, nor would she want to. Nora has myriad choices ahead of her, both in the chess game and in life.
