The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Matt Haig's The Midnight Library is an extremely popular book, with well over 2.6 million ratings on Goodreads. Is it also quite highly rated, with the average of almost exactly 4 stars (3.97). In contrast, the most recent book I reviewed here and which I consider a masterpiece, Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, has almost 130 thousand ratings, not even one-twentieth as many, with an average of 3.85.

I believe Midnight Library's popularity is based on its cute premise—that at the critical time between life and death there exists a way to explore various possible trajectories of one's life—and that it is a fast read with a feel-good ending, a tears-of-happiness kind of ending. Yet, to me, the gimmicky premise and the uplifting message do not excuse the total lack of depth in the novel. I have not learned anything about humans, their motives, or behavior.

I am, grudgingly, raising my two-and-a-half-star rating to three stars because I appreciate the central message of the novel—that life is worth living since it is everything we have—and also because my favorite band, The Cure, is mentioned twice. :)


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Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead is one of the Top 50, maybe even Top 20, books I have ever read (over 3,000 books, I estimate). It is a serious, psychologically deep, compelling, and beautifully written novel, where wisdom about human life emanates from almost every page.

Reverend John Ames, 76 years old and suffering from a heart disease, is a minister in a small Iowa town. Knowing that his time on Earth is short, he writes a sort of memoir in the form of a letter addressed to his six-year-old son, to be read when he grows up. The reverend is making an account of his life, trying to answer the questions: "Was my life a life of a good person?", "Was I a good human being?" and "What does it mean to be a good person?" The author implicitly invites the reader to answer these fundamental questions too.

There is another way of reading the central idea of the novel. It shows the basic human struggle to cope with mortality. Reverend Ames is trying to tell his son that he is a part of a much bigger and more significant entity; that he is a part of the chain that includes his great-grandfather, grandfather, father, and himself. The author also shows that the curse of impermanence is partly offset with the human beauty of existence. I do not think I have ever read a book that would better show the beauty and joy of existence.

One might say that the novel has no plot in the traditional sense; the serious religious, theological, and philosophical considerations form the centerpiece of Gilead. However, the reader will also find many wonderful stories embedded in the novel. The most touching of them, for me, is the story of Reverend Ames's first meeting his second wife—the mother of his son. Also, I believe that even the plot-oriented readers will find intriguing and captivating the narrative thread describing the relationship between the Reverend and his younger namesake, John Ames Boughton, the son of his best friend. I love the open-endedness of the novel. After all, real life lacks clear resolutions and unambiguous answers.

When I read a story or a novel, I care as much about how the story is told as about what the story tells. I was stunned by the beauty of Ms. Robinson's prose in the beginning parts of the novel. Read the breathtaking passage:

"There was the feeling of a weight of light--pressing the damp out of the grass and pressing the smell of sour old sap out of the boards on the porch floor and burdening even the trees a little as a late snow would do. It was the kind of light that rests on your shoulders the way a cat lies on your lap."

Or much later in the novel, the following bitter yet accurate statement:

"We fly forgotten as a dream, certainly, leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we have ever cared for."

Gilead won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012—a deserved recognition for this outstanding novel. I am deeply grateful to my student who recommended the novel to me.

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