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Summary: Svalbard
Nora awakes in a boat, with a deep racking cough and the smell of tobacco on her fingers. She notices how much less healthy her body feels than when she was an Olympic swimmer. She chats with her bunkmate, Ingrid, who says she came to Svalbard and the blistering cold to escape her grief over her lost love. Nora notices a gun in their cabin, and she feels like her 11-year-old self would be happy that Nora was on an adventure.
Summary: Hugo Lefèvre
Nora goes to breakfast and has an uncomfortable conversation with a fellow traveler on the ship, named Hugo. Nora looks out at the glacier and thinks the view is breathtaking. Hugo watches Nora carefully and seems to wonder about why she is so forgetful. He tells her she’s the unlucky person who is the spotter today.
Summary: Walking in Circles
Nora discovers that being a spotter means looking out for polar bears while the other scientists do fieldwork. She is on a small spot of land next to the larger Bear Island. She has a flare gun, a rucksack with some provisions, and a rifle. If she sees a polar bear, she’s supposed to shoot the flare gun to scare it off. If that doesn’t work, she’s supposed to shoot the bear. The others leave and she reflects on how profound her solitude is in this place, surrounded by nature. It feels different than being alone in her root life because this solitude brings her into connection with the world and with herself. She realizes she has felt alienated from nature and reflects on Thoreau’s experiences of solitude in nature. She is called out of her reflections by a noise. Frightened, she faces a beast emerging from the water, but it’s only a walrus. She’s still frightened but after staring at her, the walrus leaves. Then, something else emerges from the water that’s much bigger than a walrus.
Summary: A Moment of Extreme Crisis in the Middle of Nowhere
Nora is scared.
Summary: The Frustration of Not Finding a Library When You Really Need One
At first, Nora is paralyzed with fear. She gathers her strength and fires the flare, but it does nothing to deter the polar bear, who is crossing the ice at a surprising speed. She begins to bang the pot she has with a ladle and yell “BEAR!” repeatedly. The bear stops momentarily and then continues to cross the ice toward Nora. The gun is too far away to get to and use before the bear is upon her. Nora begins to scream for Mrs. Elm and the library. She realizes she doesn’t want to die. Paradoxically, wanting to live means she’s not disappointed enough in this life to be transported back to the Midnight Library. She sees that the bear doesn’t hate her, he simply sees her as a meal and is otherwise indifferent toward her. She tries to calm herself, repeating a mantra that she is not scared. She closes her eyes and wishes for the library, trying to transport herself out of the situation. When she opens her eyes, the bear is slipping into the water, and she can hear the other scientists coming for her.
Summary: Island
Nora is in shock. She’s shocked to realize she wants to live. She drinks coffee and thinks about how vast the world is.
Summary: Permafrost
Nora experiences life on Svelbard, which is intimately involved in studying the effects of climate change. The cold, solitude, and brush with death all mark this life as different from her root life. Nora reflects on what makes for a happy life. She realizes she comes from people on both sides of her family who are filled with regrets. She wonders if it’s not lack of achievement that causes disappointment in life but rather the expectation of achievement in the first place.
Summary: One Night in Longyearbyen
The expedition goes back to the port town of Longyearbyen. Nora is treated as a hero for surviving the bear attack, and Ingrid wants to have a celebratory meal. Hugo tells Nora he can tell that she is different and that she’s not the same person she was yesterday. Nora resists his questions and proof, denying that she knows what he means. Hugo then admits that he also travels between lives.
Summary: Expectation
Nora has always felt like she wasn’t enough. She wonders what life would be like if she accepted herself completely. She imagines it would be something like freedom.
Summary: Life and Death and the Quantum Wave Function
Hugo and Nora talk about their experiences sliding between alternate versions of themselves. For Hugo, instead of Mrs. Elm in the library, it’s his uncle in a video store. He tells Nora that he’s been sliding for a while. Though the particulars change, some things are always the same: There is always a guide there to help the sliders, and that person is always someone who helped the sliders in their root life. It’s always a place that resonates with the person on a personal level, too, and there is always an infinite number of lives to choose from. Hugo observes that sliders are often filled with regrets. Hugo explains the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, which says that, in the famous example of Schrödinger’s cat, the cat is alive in some variations of the universe and dead in others. There are infinite variations. Nora finds Hugo both attractive and annoying. She kisses him.
Summary: If Something is Happening to Me, I Want to Be There
Nora and Hugo have disappointing sex. She feels disconnected from Hugo, as though she’s not even there, and she leaves her life in Svelbard.
Analysis
In her life in Svalbard, Nora encounters the power and grief entwined in nature. Nora is awed by the beauty of the glaciers, which, in person, eclipse the photographs of the area that she poured over as a child. When she finds herself alone in the elements, she feels a profound connection to all that is wild, which in turn brings her closer to herself. She realizes that part of her despair is connected to being alienated from nature in her other lives. She reflects, too, on how alienated human society is from nature, replacing small, natural communities with overwhelming social networks that leave one feeling isolated. At the same time, her work at the station is to explore the ravages of climate change. As she discovers the power of nature and her desire to be closer to it, she also observes firsthand the damage that people are doing to the earth. Consequently, Nora’s experience as a glaciologist is marked both by overwhelming awe and appreciation for nature and grief at its destruction.
The polar bear is a powerful symbol of death. Before she goes to Svalbard, Nora still believes she wants to die. She tries to take her life, tries to avoid visiting versions of her life, and tells Mrs. Elm multiple times that she still wants to die. However, when she faces the polar bear, she discovers, almost too late, that what she really wants, very badly, is to live. Nora spends much of her life before the Midnight Library focused on her mistakes and all that she lacks. When she believes that she may die, she understands how much she has to be grateful for and that within her despair is a force that keenly wants to survive. The polar bear is gigantic and moves toward Nora without consideration of her narratives, feelings, plans, regrets, or desires. In the same way, as Mrs. Elm says, death is a tremendous, outsizing force that comes for us on its own terms. Faced with the grim reality of her impending demise, Nora realizes that she hadn’t understood the true nature of death.
In this section, Nora begins to understand that life is fundamentally mysterious and unknowable. In both her encounter with the polar bear and her conversation with Hugo, Nora glimpses the powerful forces in life that outsize her ability to predict what might happen to her or understand how to make choices. For example, facing death reveals its towering, permanent power. She no longer desires to choose death and instead she discovers a deep desire to live once again. Exploring the quantum mechanical nature of existence with Hugo humbles her and reminds her how simplified and partial the human understanding of life is. By grappling with this fundamental mystery, Nora moves toward a newfound freedom. If life is too unknowable to predict the outcome of decisions, then Nora is freed from regret and from “getting it right.” Like Hugo, she can instead pursue what she desires and what imbues life with meaning.
