I think about the women I know who stay. Not in Alaskan cabins but in city apartments, suburban houses, relationships where they have learned to read atmospheric pressure the way Leni reads approaching storms. They have become experts at noticing. At predicting. With hypervigilance that looks like strength, like intuition, like love - until you recognise it as survival.

Most discussion guides for The Midnight Library ask what lessons Nora learns about perception, kindness, and appreciating life. But after writing my review of the book, I kept thinking about all the questions it wouldn't let me ask. So I wrote different questions. Questions that go toward what's unresolved rather than what the book teaches. Questions for book clubs who want to dwell in uncertainty rather than rush toward agreed-upon insights.

An infinite library existing between life and death should be a space for dwelling. But Matt Haig's library isn't interested in dwelling. It's interested in lessons.

Within pages of Nora Seed's arrival in this between-state, the infinite library reveals itself as something closer to a self-help seminar with particularly good production values. Every life Nora samples becomes a parable. Haig has created an infinite possibility space and turned it into a vision board workshop.

Maybe the point isn't transfer. Maybe fiction is more like scales on a piano? You're not learning specific songs, you're training the capacity itself. You're practicing the cognitive motion of imagining that someone else's perceptions are real. Whether you then apply that capacity morally is a separate question. Fiction gives you the instrument. It doesn't make you play the right notes.