Tag: Matt Haig

The Midnight Library (2020): Matt Haig

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★★★★

Imagine a space between life and death, where we have the chance to confront our regrets. For Nora Seed, in the aftermath of an overdose, this liminal space takes the shape of a library, staffed by her beloved school librarian Mrs Elm. The shelves, tightly stacked with books, are infinite, and each of these books offers Nora the chance to visit an alternate universe: a life where, at one point or another, she made a different choice. Riddled with regret, she’s spoiled for choice; but will these other-lives engender new regrets of their own? All she can do is step bravely forward, and find out. Before I proceed, I should say that Matt Haig‘s books haven’t always won me over – I wasn’t keen on How To Stop Time – and I felt a bit resigned when my book club chose The Midnight Library as our next read. However, I must give credit where it’s due. The book may be mawkish; it may play brazenly on emotions; its message may be as subtle as an express train hurtling through a station; but, almost in spite of myself, I actually rather liked it.

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How To Stop Time (2017): Matt Haig

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★★

So that’s the end of the Summer Without Men 2018. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself: I’ve read 27 books over the two months of the challenge, which is pretty respectable; even if I didn’t quite manage to embrace the broad spectrum of subjects that I’d hoped. But those other books are still there, waiting, and will be read in due course. Having a reason to focus on the female authors in my library made me appreciate their scope and range and wit so much more, and I think I might make this an annual thing. There’s no danger of running out of books: at my present count, I have 755 books by women on my to-read list (across all genres, both digital and hard-copy – yes, that figure rather scared me as well), so I could actually do Three Years Without Men and still have books to spare. But I can’t deny I’m looking forward to letting the men in again – as long as they behave themselves. I’ve had books by Ben Kane and Peter Ackroyd and Robert Harris and all sorts of people just sitting there, tempting me for the last two months, so we might have a bit of a rush on Romans and Vikings and general muscly-warlike-stuff until the novelty wears off again. But we’re easing ourselves in gently for the first book, with a typically sentimental, introspective novel by Matt Haig.

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The Radleys (2010): Matt Haig

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★★★

Nothing much ever happens in the Yorkshire village of Bishopthorpe. That’s exactly why the Radleys moved there from London before their children were born. With their unremarkable middle-class villa, their predictable middle-class people-carrier, their unobjectionable middle-class existence, their book clubs and their Sunday dinners, and their two shy and rather sickly teenage children, Helen and Peter Radley are barely worth a second glance. And that’s the way they like it. Unfortunately, their children are getting to a difficult age and events soon rapidly spiral out of control. It turns out that teenage self-discovery is much harder to handle when your entire family are vampires.

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The Humans (2013): Matt Haig

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★★★★

Professor Andrew Martin is, for one dazzlingly brief moment, the most brilliant man on the planet. The next, he has vanished off the face of the earth. Unfortunately for Andrew Martin, we’re not alone. You see, all those people who wondered if there was intelligent life elsewhere in the universe were absolutely right. They were just wrong when they assumed it’d want to get in touch with us. Or, more specifically, that said intelligent life would want us to get in touch with it. And so, when Andrew Martin solves the Riemann hypothesis and holds the secret of exponential human advancement in the palm of his hand, the watching extraterrestrial lifeforms decide that he must be stopped.

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