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‘Between life and death there is a library,’ she said. ‘And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’
This quote from Mrs. Elm appears twice in the novel: once in the epigraph and again in the chapter “The Midnight Library,” when Mrs. Elm is explaining to Nora the nature of the library and traveling through variations of one’s life. This introduction opens up the imagination to how much might be possible if one had chosen a different path. However, in the end, Nora’s answer to the core question of what she would’ve done differently is complex. In not choosing a different life than her root life, she suggests that she wouldn’t have made any different choices. But the process of choosing and living through different lives also teaches her the errors in her fundamental assumptions about life, including the idea that life is predictable or can be lived “correctly.” In the end, Nora chooses to remain in her own life, embracing the idea that she doesn’t know what’s next. That not-knowing is part of the joy in her one life: anything is possible.
‘It’s hard to predict, isn’t it?’ she asked, looking blankly in front of her as she moved a black bishop across the board to take a white pawn. ‘The things that will make us happy.’
Mrs. Elm makes this observation in “The Chessboard,” after Nora returns to the Midnight Library from her visit to the pub life with Dan. Nora finds herself surprised by the way her life with Dan turned out, which allows her to let go of some of her regrets about breaking up with Dan. Mrs. Elm uses this opportunity to make a crucial point about how difficult it is to predict what will make someone happy. What’s more, Nora’s regrets often center on how her choices have negatively impacted the people she loves. In visiting the pub life, she learns that not only would staying with Dan have made her unhappy, but that Dan would also have suffered in that life. Because the future is fundamentally unknown, this passage suggests that there is a certain amount of futility in trying to predict the outcome of choices, and in blaming oneself for the unhappiness of others.
‘Very good choice.’
‘What? It’s a very good life?’
‘Oh, I didn’t say that. I merely feel that you might be getting better at choosing.’
‘So, it’s a bad life?’
‘I didn’t say that either.’
This conversation between Mrs. Elm and Nora takes place in the chapter “The Only Way to Learn is to Live,” after Nora has decided to visit the life in which she moves to Australia with Izzy. This exchange illustrates that the goal of making choices in the library, as in life, is not necessarily to pursue happiness. Because happiness is elusive and unpredictable, Mrs. Elm encourages Nora to use a different rubric for evaluating the strength of her choices. She praises Nora’s choice because visiting the Australian life will teach Nora a valuable lesson about regret, the unexpected consequences of one’s actions, and the tenderness and fleetingness of life itself. The question of whether a choice leads to a “good” or “bad” life is less important than the lessons each choice may lead to. In this case, choosing the Australian life is wise because it leads to lessons that are crucial for Nora’s growth as a person.
