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2.5 stars

[b:The Midnight Library|52578297|The Midnight Library|Matt Haig|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1602190253l/52578297.SY75.jpg|74043794] is one of those books that sets out to achieve something and loses the plot midway, becoming overly pedantic in the process.

The book begins with Nora Seed, a young woman, on the brink of making a terrible choice. Having been ousted from her job, found out that her beloved cat has been run over, that her estranged brother has visited the town she lives in without having reached out to her, and that her friendships have withered away, she resolves that life has become to heavy, too unbearable to even pretend to plod along. She leaves a note to whoever will find it, and puts out a vaguely ominous post on Facebook. She overdoses on antidepressants and...

...wakes up in a library. The Midnight Library, to be precise. An ephemeral place poised at the juncture of life and death, very bardo-esque. The library is immense in its scope, with endless shelves of books, all in varying shades of green. She is greeted by what appears to be Mrs. Elm, a figure from her childhood who she felt close to, and who was present at a crucial juncture in Nora's life. Haig delves into the concept of multiverses and quantum indeterminacy, and explores the idea that every time we make a choice, a separate reality is created for what would have been the potential or possible outcomes of that choice. Each book is a representation of a life that Nora could have lived, if she had made different choices.

"Every life contains many millions of decisions," says Mrs. Elm.

"Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations. These books are portals to all the lives you could be living."

While in this Library, Nora is Schrödinger's cat, neither alive nor dead, and yet both. Mrs. Elm explains that she can explore these other options of could-have-beens, if she so wishes, and coaxes Nora to get to the root of why she currently feels this way. The book takes us on a journey of different Noras, each having branched off further and further in her past, as she took decisions (some key, some not-so-key) which altered the course of her life. We are introduced to happily-married-Nora, glaciologist-Nora, and rock star-Nora, among others. Along the way, she meets another person like herself, a 'slider' who slips between these different possibilities, and reveals that he infinitely prefers this to choosing a fixed reality, therefore exposing Nora to the possibility that the Midnight Library itself is a destination, a half-life or a halfway-house, as it were.

Nora spends what seems like an inordinate amount of time in the library, 'trying on' various realities, to see which one fits best. According to Mrs. Elm, she can continue to live on in any reality she desires, if she is happy there, but if she isn't, she will inevitably be pulled back to the Midnight Library...

...eventually Nora finds a life that suits her, one that she is happy to be living. No prizes for guessing which one it is.

Over the course of the book, the text increasingly becomes dogmatic, and attempts to explain 'good life choices' through Nora. Additionally, the book deals with mental health issues in a very linear fashion, not really exploring the intricacies of what it means to be depressed, or suicidal. As a character, Nora is not nearly complex or relatable enough for the reader to be invested in the book in any way.

Overall, an interesting concept (even if not the most original) which could have been approached with far more nuance.


"Relativity" by M.C.Escher

Few authors succeed in making the mundane interesting, and [a:Gabriel García Márquez|13450|Gabriel García Márquez|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1588856705p2/13450.jpg] is right up there with them.

No One Writes to the Colonel follows the routine lives of an unnamed colonel and his wife, who cohabit their ramshackle house with a prize cock - the little savings they have are spent on ensuring the cock is kept healthy for upcoming cockfights. The bird serves as the only reminder of their son, Augustin, who was killed at a cockfight earlier in the year for distributing seditious literature. The oppressive regime in the unnamed South American country (where they live) has resulted in the colonel and his wife waiting for the colonel's pension for an unimaginable fifteen years. The colonel and his wife both have their pride, preventing them from uninhibitedly asking friends and neighbours for help. Only later in the story does the colonel, driven to a corner by his situation, contemplate selling the cock to rapacious trader Salas. This novella is rife with metaphors, from letting go of the past, to being made to feel privileged because of the 'ownership' of a money-spinning item, to the shifty ways of fair-weather friends.

García Márquez maintains an oppressive atmosphere of sickness and decay throughout the story, and the dull, listless rain augments this atmosphere, until the reader is suffused with a sense of existential dread. The novella focuses on how the systems our countries erect, purportedly for our benefit, often overlook the bulk of our populace. The colonel hones in on the postman whenever he arrives by the ferry each Friday, in the fast diminishing hope that he would have brought along news of the colonel's pension, but to no avail.

There aren't any magical realism references in this novella, but this is García Márquez at perhaps his finest, honing in on the quotidian travails of an oppressed class under an authoritarian regime.

[b:A Guide to the Birds of East Africa|3476509|A Guide to the Birds of East Africa (Mr Malik #1)|Nicholas Drayson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347752996l/3476509.SY75.jpg|3517838] is one of those delightful books that you come across by happenstance. In my case, it was an online book sale and this happened to be one of the books on offer. As somebody who really enjoys birding, naturally I bought it. And I certainly wasn't disappointed!

Although Kenyan birds of all shapes and sizes (where the story is set) make an appearance throughout, at the heart of it this is a love story celebrating quiet perseverance and integrity. Unassuming Mr. Malik makes a wager with the flashy Harry Khan to win the affections of Rose Mbikwa, and how they both go about it forms the premise of the story. Once can't help but like Mr. Malik, an unusually ethical man in a city filled with corruption, who unbeknownst to his friends carries several personal demons, and the reader is introduced to these bit-by-bit as the book progresses.

This is an enchanting book which can quite easily be read in one sitting! As someone who loves birds and has never been to Kenya (but is dying to go), I found the easy natural history interspersed throughout the book to be very enriching.

Read this if you can! Here is just one of several delightful species which you can expect to encounter in the book.


Great blue turaco (Corythaeola cristata)
Photo credits: Rural Orphans & Widows AIDS Network

Notes:

- the eponymous Lincoln is not President Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States of America, but his son, William Wallace 'Willy' Lincoln, who died of typhoid fever on February 20, 1862, aged 11.
- In some schools of Buddhism, bardo or antarābhava is an intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth.

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Grief makes the best of us act in the strangest of ways. When young Willy fell ill and subsequently passed away due to typhoid, a deep change was wrought in his father, President 'Abe' Lincoln, and we thought he would never be the same again.


In "Free Willy", by Peter Beckett


"Do you believe in life after death?", my son asked me. "Will Willy Lincoln go to Heaven?" To these questions, I have no answer, being of a rather stolid disposition towards these matters. Oh, I go to church, same as everybody else, but that is as far as I go.


In "Some things you cannot answer", by Marie Louis


Why not a half-way house, innit? S'long as you're dead, why choose either Heaven or Hell? S'not as if you is being pulled to either - you go as you like, and if neither is fer you, you square yerself and say, "right, well, I'll be hangin' here fer as long as I needs to make up me mind."


In "Graveyard Shift: Philosophical ramblings of a Former Alcoholic",
by L.S. Chutzpah


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This was a difficult book to get through, not least because of literature of the kind mentioned above (all citations mentioned in this review are fictitious), which put me in mind of academic papers and work, but because the story was a confused mess of different narratives and viewpoints, which coddywompled towards a vague ending. The three stars are for the writing itself, but all said and done, I did not enjoy the story, and the enjoyment of any book is, to my mind at least, paramount.

Ah, Universe, take a bow. For somehow unerringly knowing what I needed to read, and when.

In hindsight, June was a perfect month to read [b:Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda|19547856|Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Simonverse, #1)|Becky Albertalli|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1402915678l/19547856.SY75.jpg|27679579], it being both Pride Month and my birthday month (I turned 30 this year!), and I probably could not have chosen a better YA to read, following an intense few weeks in June.

The book is narrated by the eponymous Simon (Spiers), a sixteen year old gay boy whose homosexuality is only known to 'Blue', an email correspondence whom Simon has a crush on, and who coincidentally attends the same school as him. A classmate of Simon happens across these emails, and blackmails Simon into introducing him to Abby, a girl in Simon's friend circle. The book then unfolds over a series of events which bring into sharper focus Simon's reluctance to reveal his sexuality, his shifting equations with his friends and family, his steadily increasing attraction for 'Blue', all while navigating school life, which can be difficult on the best of days.

This book resonated with me on various levels, not the least of which was the nervousness which Simon felt in 'coming out' to his friend, the reality of being bullied or harassed for being gay, and the importance of having support structures which one can fall back on. I liked how Albertalli dealt with this book in a very subtle, almost off-handed way, drawing attention to important issues by not drawing attention to them. The result is a cute book that, despite its very American references (Target, for example), still manages to be low-key wonderful.

A stand-alone Harville-Secker edition published to commemorate [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615497402p2/3354.jpg]'s 70th birthday, 'Birthday Girl' is actually part of a larger collection of short stories collated and curated by Murakami, [b:Birthday Stories: Selected and Introduced by Haruki Murakami|18483648|Birthday Stories Selected and Introduced by Haruki Murakami|Haruki Murakami|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1378995724l/18483648.SY75.jpg|4391].

The story is typical of Murakami's oeuvre, layering a tale without revealing elements of it. In a chic Italian restaurant in the Roppongi district of Tokyo, a woman who works there as a waiter is forced by circumstances to work there on the day of her 20th birthday (20 is considered as 'coming of age' in Japan). A bizarre series of episodes plays out, and the woman gets to meet the reclusive restaurant owner, who grants her a wish on the occasion of her birthday, which he guarantees her will come true. The reader is never privy to what the wish was, or even whether it came true.

In trademark Murakami fashion, the story creates more questions than answers. What was the wish? Did it come true? Why was the owner certain he could grant the wish? Why did the woman experience this on her 20th? By subtly focusing on the experience of life itself, rather than the questions and answers which seek to trivialise it, Murakami infuses life with a quotidian magic, something that each one of us can look for and find, if we open ourselves to the possibility of it.

I might not have very different things to say to augment the critical reviews of this book which already exist, but I am not going to preface my review with any version of "I love [a:Philip Pullman|3618|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1614625372p2/3618.jpg] but...". Looking at this book isolatedly, it is by far the most disappointing book I have read this year.

Comparisons with 'His Dark Materials' will be rife, but let us take a moment to step back and focus on just this book. The events of [b:La Belle Sauvage|34128219|La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust, #1)|Philip Pullman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1498930382l/34128219.SX50.jpg|14190696] are several years in the past, and the events of 'His Dark Materials' have taken place in the interim. In [b:The Secret Commonwealth|19034943|The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust #2)|Philip Pullman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563043403l/19034943.SY75.jpg|27058954] we are introduced to 'young adult' Lyra Belacqua/ Silvertongue, now in college. Lyra has been singularly lucky all these years - various entities have stepped in and helped her in her journey, and if not for some of them, we would not be reading this book about her. However, actions, no matter how far back in the past they were undertaken, will have consequences, and the book begins with Lyra beginning to comprehend just how cocooned and ensconced in her world she has been so far. Her relationship with Jordan College, which has seemed like a fixture all these years, is suddenly compromised. She learns of 'Oakley Street' and the events of La Belle Sauvage, and it is as if the rug has been pulled out from under her. She must build anew her relationships with people who have known her all her life.

One such relationship is with her daemon, Pantalaimon. He and Lyra are at odds from the start of the book - 'odds' is perhaps a tad soft; they hate each other. While Pullman does well in exploring new facets of the relationship between humans and their daemons, the bickering between Lyra and Pantalaimon is disembodied, lacking conviction, and bordering on the abstract - what is the nature of truth? Can it be attained through a rational approach, or can only an imaginative (and therefore irrational?) approach help ascertain it? Lyra and Pan are torn asunder by this fundamental question, which is where Pullman overdoes the severity of their separation. I could have understood Pan being simply disgruntled, but the events of The Secret Commonwealth are borne out of this mutual hatred for the other's school of thought (which I thought was very forced), and Lyra and Pan's journeys to reconcile with each other.

With a weak foundation such as this, the story progresses through a quagmire of ennui, introducing half-baked characters and dangling plot-lines. There is no way to say this without sounding like a millennial, but Pullman tries to come across as 'woke', and fails brilliantly. A hastily introduced rape scene does not contribute to the story in any way, nor does the author utilise this opportunity to address an all-pervasive rape culture (please read other people's reviews dealing with the rape episode - I could not agree more with each one of them). I found the haphazardly introduced characters who do not effectively contribute to the book very off-putting (loved Alison, though). The book is strewn with missed opportunities. An insipid ending (which could have been a cliffhanger if dealt with differently) left me questioning why I had plodded through almost 700 pages of this book.

I agree with Miles' conclusion in his review, where he states that this book definitely imperils Pullman's reputation as an author.