payment page
Summary: Love and Pain
Nora is upset about the pain she’s caused others in her life, and she wants to stop sliding. She starts to give up, which causes an earthquake in the library. Mrs. Elm says she’s giving up at the worst time and reminds her how badly she wanted to live when she faced the polar bear. Mrs. Elm reminds Nora that, as in chess, the game of life is never over until it’s over. She says Nora still has pieces on the table. She tells Nora that something that seems very ordinary might lead her to success. She reminds Nora of the time when she was seventeen years old and she decided to prove she could swim across a river.
Summary: Equidistance
Nora and Mrs. Elm enter into the memory of Nora swimming the river together. She sees the moment when she found herself equidistant from both shores.
Summary: Someone Else’s Dream
Joe tries to save Nora, who seems to be in trouble as she swims the river. But Nora makes it across, despite nearly dying. Mrs. Elm and Nora talk about the fact that each life Nora has tried was part of someone else’s dream: her father’s dream of her becoming a swimmer to make up for his rugby injury or her brother’s dream of The Labyrinths making it big. Even her dream of being a glaciologist was part of Mrs. Elm’s vision for her future. Nora picks out a life that’s no one else’s dream, the life in which she has decided to work with animals.
Summary: A Gentle Life
The life where Nora works with animals is an easy one for her to enter into. She spends the day working with dogs, and even though some of the dogs are hurt, she enjoys the work because she feels like a good person. She has lunch with another worker at the dog rescue, Dylan. She catches on that she and Dylan are a couple. They decide to go to dinner and watch a Ryan Bailey film. Dylan reminds her of a dog with his good-natured, pure demeanor.
Summary: Why Want Another Universe if This One Has Dogs
Dylan and Nora walk through Bedford. Nora notices that String Theory is still closed in this reality, so its failure didn’t have anything to do with her. Nora asks Dylan if he ever thinks about other lives he could have lived. He tells her that he doesn’t. He feels happy and wonders why he would go anywhere else when he gets to be with dogs. He seems to have very few regrets. Nora likes Dylan but she doesn’t feel attracted to him. They pass by Ash, who doesn’t recognize Nora in this life.
Summary: Dinner with Dylan
Dylan and Nora have dinner in a restaurant that Nora remembers going to with Dan, who had been rude to the waiter. She wonders if there’s any place Dylan wouldn’t love. Dylan remembers Nora getting awards for swimming in high school and seeing her with Mrs. Elm in the library. Dylan said he saw Mrs. Elm the other day with a caretaker. The thought upsets Nora, who wants Mrs. Elm to remain just as she is in her memory.
Summary: Last Chance Saloon
Nora and Dylan watch the Ryan Bailey movie Last Chance Saloon. Nora realizes she’s not too happy in this life and that Dylan deserves the Nora who was in love with him. She drinks wine and reads the wine bottle, enamored of the description of the vineyard. She then says goodbye to the dog as she slides back to the library.
Summary: Buena Vista Vineyard
When Nora gets to the library, she asks Mrs. Elm to help her find a life like the vineyard she read about on the wine bottle. She ends up married to a man who owns a small vineyard in California. She finds it easy to fake knowledge of this life and finds her husband to be very pleasant. She asks her husband if they’re happy and knows his affirmative answer is true. There’s nothing wrong with this life, but she knows she’s going to go back to the library. She’s curious about what other lives are out there for her.
Summary: The Many Lives of Nora Seed
Nora begins to slide into many different lives, realizing both that she didn’t have to enjoy everything about sliding to keep doing it nor did enjoying a life mean she wanted to stay in it. She experiences every imaginable configuration of herself. Though this process helps her move through her depression and broaden her perspective on what’s possible, it also makes her lose her sense of self. She runs into Hugo in one of her slides and tells him she needs to find one life to stay in. She then watches him leave the life they’re in and forget who she is.
Summary: Lost in the Library
Mrs. Elm recognizes that Nora has lost her way. They focus on seeking out kindness. This makes Nora think of Ash and want to visit the life in which she chose to be with Ash.
Analysis
Chess is a symbol throughout the novel, illustrating that possibility is a tonic to despair. When Nora loses her way, both in her root life and as she visits the Midnight Library in between other lives, Mrs. Elm uses chess to help illustrate ways in which Nora can change her perception. After traveling through many lives, Nora begins to lose her sense of self. Mrs. Elm reminds Nora of how she used to play chess in high school, and no matter how badly she was losing, as long as she had pieces on the table, there was still the possibility of a win. Mrs. Elm compares this to life, emphasizing that as long as Nora is still breathing, there’s a chance for her to find a path that is meaningful for her. Throughout her journey in the Midnight Library, Nora releases many of the limiting beliefs she had in her root life. This parallels losing many pieces in a game of chess. Though they may not have served her, these beliefs made up her understanding of who she was. Traveling through different lives, she similarly sacrifices pieces of herself in order to open up the path toward a more meaningful life.
Nora learns that there are infinite possibilities, which creates a sense of hope and helps her understand what she needs to create meaning in her life. In the Midnight Library, Nora comes to understand that infinite variations of her life are possible. This seems to suggest that there is also a world of possibility in any single life, given that each variation grew out of choices she made in her root life. However, at the same time, after experiencing many of the infinite variations of her life, Nora continues to experience a sense that something is missing. She realizes that, on some level, she’s been searching outside of herself for meaning and satisfaction, and that no variation of life can satisfy her. After visiting hundreds of lives, she faces the fact that no matter what she changes or how many regrets she addresses, she still fundamentally feels lost. To answer this sense of being unmoored, Mrs. Elm encourages Nora to ground herself in the things that are the most important to her, and Nora realizes that the thing that anchors her even in the midst of despair or uncertainty is kindness.
While success is a slippery goal in life, with Dylan, Nora also learns that lack of ambition is not the answer for her either. In the gentle life, she experiences a certain sense of ease and the simple pleasures of taking care of animals. She feels like a good person because she’s giving herself over to the good of other creatures. However, her interactions with Dylan leave something to be desired. She recognizes that he’s a good person, but while Dylan is satisfied with simple pleasures, is happy wherever he is, and doesn’t question much in life, Nora’s restlessness and inquisitiveness quickly lead her to boredom with this gentle life. Though single-minded pursuit of success is not the answer for Nora, a life without friction leaves her feeling uninspired. Unlike Dan, Dylan lacks cruelty and self-absorption, but his extremely easygoing nature quickly bores Nora. In both the simple life and the successful life, Nora searches for something more.
