I don’t know, we have so many unread books in the house, but sometimes a title just jumps out at you from a book bin or shop shelf and says: “Buy me.” This is what happened yesterday, and I read The Midnight Library cover to cover in some four hours. I liked this book. Very often I am turned off by the anodyne nature of so much mainstream fiction, but this book has more going for it than most. As you might expect from an obscure author of weird fiction, I am not easy to please and this book deals with several themes that are, shall we say, not completely original. Richard Bach was writing about parallel lives in the multiverse over twenty years ago, but somehow Haig’s expression of this idea is easily accessible.

I have read the book contains suicide triggers, but I don’t see this. What I do see from the protagonist is that it’s possible to appear to have everything – many talents, obvious privilege and overt parental support – and yet to be in total lack of an identity because those around you have imposed their dominant will over your own reality. I agree. I was saying today that the one thing I was discouraged from doing in life was the thing I loved doing most. My parents and teachers were in accord that playing the guitar was a waste of time because I was never going to earn a living; even to the extent that my Maths teacher stole my guitar and hid it in the staffroom because he thought I was practising when I should have been doing extra maths homework. It wouldn’t happen these days of course, but it takes a very strong will to defy parental, educational and peer pressure.

So, yes, I felt for Nora, I felt her despair and I was on a learning curve with her in the Midnight Library. I thought it was a wonderfully easy read, maybe a bit thin on the quantum side of things but that’s inevitable; I suppose it’s what you get when you have a professional editor and a mainstream publisher. That, and the fact that Voltaire, the cat, couldn’t come back to life, whereas Nora’s father, the adulterer, could come back and continue to exercise control, cost the author one star. The explanation Mrs Elm gave about the cat was inconsistent in context. That said, I don’t often abandon everything else to read a book cover to cover and that, for a mainstream bestseller, is impressive.