Matt Haig's observations on life

A little bit of background📃

Matt Haig (born 1975) is an English author and journalist. I have followed him on Instagram for some years now, and I find myself nodding on the regular at his posts about life, politics, and humanity. His values align with mine and I admire that he uses his platform for good. He is open about his mental health struggles and these struggles form the basis of his books. While Matt has written both fiction and non-fiction for children and adults, he is most known for his speculative fiction, where he takes ordinary people and places them in supernatural situations, to make observations on the human condition. This post reviews three of his books.

The midnight library | Published August 2020 | Read March 2022 and May 2026

The story📖

Life has not turned out the way Nora Seed hoped it would. She's at an all-time low when she takes an overdose and ends up in the midnight library, in the space between life and death. There she meets Mrs Elm, her old high school librarian who once showed her much kindness at a time when she desperately needed it. The books in the midnight library allow Nora to experience the lives she has not had due to the decisions she now regrets. This journey provides Nora with an opportunity to work out for herself the best way to live.

My thoughts on the book💭

The midnight library seems to be a rather polarising book. People really seem to love it or hate it! I read it a few years ago and recently bought my own copy and read it again. The book takes the sliding doors premise and frames it around Nora's sad life. The books in her library are all about her regrets and she has the chance to experience for herself a series of alternate lives in parallel universes littered with pathways that she didn't take. I was immersed in Nora's journey from the outset and read the book quickly. The midnight library is quaint and quirky and full of heart. I think Haig does a nice job with the concept of "the grass is always greener until you find out that it isn't".

Haig is a suicide survivor himself and has long battled with depression. Critics of The midnight library have found fault with his treatment of depression, particularly that he seems to be suggesting that positive self-talk can cure it. I don't think Haig is suggesting that. He writes Nora as someone with anxiety and prone to panic attacks. Nora is set up as an overthinker and a people pleaser. Her journey focuses on regrets and perspective and trying to find a way to live without being plagued by self-reproachments and sadness. The central message for me is self-compassion and an understanding what it means to be imperfectly human and reframing mistakes, missteps, and decisions as opportunities for learning.

Haig's writing is warm and gentle and I don't agree with criticisms that he has used The midnight library to craft a self-help book where he hits the reader over the head with his life lessons and hackneyed self-improvement messages. I do understand this his approach leaves little for readers to do to work out the messages for themselves, but I rather liked the thought-provoking nature of the book. This is my favourite piece from the book, on page 143. This observation hit me hard.

Nora had always had trouble accepting herself. From as far back as she could remember, she'd had the sense that she wasn't enough. Her parents, who both had their own insecurities, encouraged that idea. She imagined now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature...She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

There are quite a lot of lives for Nora to experience and the story does get a bit bogged down in them all. Perhaps Haig could have edited these lives to provide clearer messages about Nora's learning from her near-death experience. I agree with one reviewer who lamented the lack of depth in each life, where there were lost opportunities for deeper exploration of Nora's struggles and lessons from the experience of each parallel universe. I agree that she leaves each life too quickly; again, there could have been fewer jumps and more meat to each one. The ending isn't unexpected and I was okay with the element of predictability, but the book would have been more powerful if the ending was less neatly wrapped up. Haig could also have fleshed out Nora's learnings from her journey through the midnight library to cement his central messaging about self-compassion and perspective.

In sum📝

The midnight library is not perfect, and I completely understand its criticisms, but I related to Nora and her struggles and I think the parallel universe concept is a super premise for a book about self-realisation. Matt Haig's observations on life and living resonated with me, even if they were a bit heavy-handed. However, the key messages from Nora's journey could have been explored in more depth, providing greater insight into what Nora learned from her time in the midnight library, perhaps even in an epilogue, as other reviewers have suggested. For all the book's flaws, I still stand by my reaction to The midnight library's unashamed sentimentality; to me, it's a beautiful book.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The life impossible | Published August 2024 | Read February 2026

The story📖

Retired math teacher, Grace Winters, is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend. She is curious about the house so she sets off on an adventure to Ibiza with no clue as to what might happen next. Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed.

My thoughts on the book💭

The life impossible is another of Matt Haig's speculative fiction stories. I've seen his books described as "therapeutical fantasy" and I reckon that's an apt description. I was intrigued by The life impossible as I warmed to Grace from the outset and was keen to find out where her story of self-discovery led. The book starts out with such promise, but it rapidly goes in a very odd direction. I read it after The midnight library so I was expecting a magical slant to the story. I loved the magical premise to The midnight library, but The life impossible was just too weird for me. There's lots of Matt Haig's lyrical writing and a sprinkling of beautiful turns of phrase to present life lessons, but I wasn't quite sure what inspiration I was supposed to take from the book.

In sum📝

I'm not a fantasy reader but I don't mind magical elements in a book that serve a purpose. I just found The life impossible a bridge too far for me, even though I admire Matt Haig for tackling thoughtful questions around hope, healing and reinvention. It's a shame, as the book started out so well. My three-star rating is for the first half of the book. The second half was a bit bonkers for me.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

The Radleys | Published July 2010 | Read April 2026

The story📖

The Radleys are an everyday family who juggle dysfunctional lives. However, as Peter and Helen Radley know but their children, Clara and Rowan, have yet to find out, the Radleys happen to be a family of abstaining vampires. This rather juicy bit of family history comes to light when one night Clara finds herself driven to commit a bloodthirsty act. Helen and Peter are forced to confront who they are, with the help or hindrance of Peter's twin brother Will, who is a practising vampire.

My thoughts on the book💭

It may sound odd to say this about a book about vampires, but The Radleys is a hoot. The whole thing is bonkers but if you go along for the ride as I did, you might thoroughly enjoy it. Matt Haig takes the idea of the menace that lies under the thin veneer of suburban respectability to a new level. Along the way he throws in rather hilarious tips and tricks from The abstainers handbook to keep the Radleys on the straight and narrow.

Matt Haig's lyrical writing is well on display here. The book is clever and sharp, yet the tone is light. The book isn't really about vampires at all; they are just the vehicle for the book's central messages: the complexity of family relationships, the fine line between our true nature and our desires, and the consequences of repressing yourself just to fit in. It's all a bit whackadoodle, but in the best possible way.

The whole family is fascinating! Peter is a GP whose job makes him constantly thirsty. Helen is desperate to abstain and help her family live as normal a life as possible. Clare and Rowan are constantly pale and poorly, suffering from insomnia, rashes, and nausea. After Clara's vampiric act, cool and hedonistic Uncle Will turns up to save the day. He's an unashamed vampire, existing a surreal world of "out of the closet but restrained vampires" in Manchester. The Radleys was written at the height of Twilight mania and was made into a film in 2024, starring Damian Lewis as Peter Radley and his twin brother, Will, and Kelly Macdonald as Helen Radley. One wonders if Matt Haig's aim was to write something of an antidote to the vampire world we were served up at the time via the Cullen family.

In sum📝

I do agree with criticisms of the book that Haig didn't quite pick a lane and stick with it as the book straddles teen fiction, satire and horror within Haig's usual speculative fiction wrapping. I do think the book works a bit better than the other two I have reviewed in this post as the life lessons are more subtle and Haig respects his readers' abilities to glean them for themselves. The dark humour is a delightful surprise and the book feels like such a fresh take on the well-worn path of vampire stories.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐