payment page
Summary: 00:00:00
Nora finds herself enshrouded in mist, which she walks through to encounter a strange building. She notices that her watch is stopped at 00:00:00 and thinks there’s either something wrong with time or with her watch. There’s a profound sense of strangeness as Nora enters the building, and she quickly finds herself surrounded by books in all directions, with no visible exits. As she reaches for one of the books, a voice behind her tells her to be careful.
Summary: The Librarian
Nora turns to see that the person behind her is Mrs. Elm, her high school librarian. She remembers that day nineteen years before, when Mrs. Elm comforted her after her father died. Nora asks if she is dead and in the afterlife.
Summary: The Midnight Library
Mrs. Elm recites the quote from the novel’s epigraph, letting Nora know that there’s a library between life and death. Here, she has the chance to try on other lives. She can undo her regrets and see how her life would’ve turned out if she made different choices. Nora is focused still on wanting to die, and Mrs. Elm says she doesn’t get to decide, though she may still die soon. Nora realizes she has been thinking of herself only in terms of what she isn’t, in terms of her regrets. Mrs. Elm asks her how she wants to live.
Summary: The Moving Shelves
Nora notices that the books on the shelves are moving in a way she doesn’t completely understand. Mrs. Elm explains that with the exception of one, each of the books on the shelves is a portal to a different version of her life. These versions are created by different decisions Nora could have made. The one book that is different from the others is The Book of Regrets.
Summary: The Book of Regrets
Nora examines The Book of Regrets, which is divided into chapters from 0 to 35, one for each year of her life. The regrets don’t follow a chronology, though, and they sometimes shift, becoming fainter or more pronounced as she reads through them. They each begin with “I regret.” The regret about not having children blinks between faint and bold. Most of her recent regrets involve her relationship with Dan.
Summary: Regret Overload
Nora looks back on her life with Dan and realizes how frightened she was of replicating her parents’ marriage. She wonders if her parents ever loved each other. Her mother died three months before Nora was supposed to marry Dan, leaving her overwhelmed with grief. She felt trapped by Dan, but when she left him, she felt trapped by her single life, too. Mrs. Elm, who seems to be able to read Nora’s thoughts, says that the regrets are too much for her. She feels overwhelmed by them, and Mrs. Elm urges her to close the book.
Summary: Every Life Begins Now
Mrs. Elm encourages Nora to try on one of the lives in the books. She tells Nora that if she finds a life she truly wants to live in, she will stay there, and it will become her life until she dies. As soon as Nora feels disappointment in a life, she’ll be returned to the Midnight Library. Nora decides to visit the life where she and Dan are still together.
Analysis
The character of Mrs. Elm represents Nora’s higher self, the internal wisdom that guides her toward what she needs to learn in life. Mrs. Elm looks and acts similarly to the Mrs. Elm whom Nora knew in life, but her differences from the mortal librarian give clues to her true nature. For example, the Mrs. Elm in the Midnight Library often reads Nora’s mind, responding in the same manner to what Nora says aloud as she does to what Nora merely thinks. This suggests that Mrs. Elm is, in some ways, a part of Nora. Mrs. Elm also has an encyclopedic knowledge of Nora’s entire life, suggesting that she has, in some metaphysical way, been with Nora throughout the entirety of her life. As a wiser part of Nora’s self, Mrs. Elm also guides Nora to the intimate, specific lessons she needs to learn to make it through this dark period and to decide to live.
The Midnight Library symbolizes the liminal space between life and death in which Nora can learn about the nature of reality. In religions like Buddhism and Catholicism, the space in between life and death is believed to be a powerful school to teach visitors about the mistakes they have made in life and about the core misunderstandings of their existences. This learning often comes through suffering, which helps those visiting these liminal spaces let go of the illusions or sins that kept them lost in their lives. Similarly, Mrs. Elm tells Nora that she’s in between life and death. Through the process of visiting her alternate lives, Nora is supposed to learn what she wants from life. From the start, Nora finds this process agonizing, both because it prevents her from the death she desires and because it forces her to face the regrets that have tormented her. She goes through an arduous journey that may lead to death or to spiritual rebirth.
The Book of Regrets represents the power of regret to overwhelm Nora’s life and sense of self. When Nora opens the book, she is bombarded with everything she has regretted in her life. Each regret is a portal into a series of conversations that Nora has been having with herself throughout her life, and each of those conversations cast Nora as the villain, the failure, and the bad daughter, sister, friend, or partner. In a sense, reading through The Book of Regrets is a hellish experience for Nora, who calls it agony, as it replicates the way of thinking and talking to herself that lead her to end her life. In her root life, Nora has been, in a sense, living inside of The Book of Regrets, constantly having conversations with herself about how much she has failed, casting herself as the villain of her own life. It is telling, then, that Nora can’t withstand perusing the book, suggesting that regret is such a powerful force in Nora’s life that it overwhelms and defines her sense of self.
