"And how is your mental health?"
Review of Matt Haig In Conversation with Harrogate Literature Festival
By Olivia Chalmers
Maybe I am biased, because Matt Haig has become one of my all-time favourite authors during this catastrophic year of plummeting mental health, but I jumped at the opportunity to review this event; and it was one of the most enjoyable and stimulating hours of my life. Matt Haig, author of Reasons to Stay Alive (2015) and Notes on a Nervous Planet (2018) wrote The Midnight Library (2020) to remind us all that our normal lives are just as special and invigorating as those "what if" possibilities we stew over on a daily basis. When protagonist Nora Seed attempts to take her own life due to dissatisfaction with her lifestyle and mental health issues, she is thrust into a "purgatory" disguised as a library where she is able to try out different versions of her life that could have played out had she made different decisions. It is the perfect remedy for an escape from 2020, and it is my belief that everyone should read it.
In the free, online event streamed on YouTube, Haig sat down with Matthew Stadlen for Harrogate's Literature Festival (est. 1966) on October 22 2020 to discuss his most recent novel, The Midnight Library. Online interviews of this manor (frequently seen on daytime television such as This Morning (1988 - present) often make me uncomfortable; all the awkward silences, the pauses as the connection lags, the interviewer and interviewee cutting each other off - but I found none of these things presenting themselves during the interview between Haig and Stadlen. It flowed like a normal conversation, which almost made me forget that it was an interview and that the subject matter was so formal. There were jokes, too, which is always an added bonus to something that can be viewed as boring; Stadlen jokes that he and Haig were long lost brothers due to both being gingers and having the same hairstyle. It instantly set the tone for the interview, and I knew that Haig actually wanted to be there and engage with the questions (another pet hate for interviews: when the interviewee looks as though they'd rather be watching paint dry). The interviewer, interviewee and subject matter complementing each other suitably provided a well-rounded and successful event.
Matt Haig's 2015 memoir Reasons to Stay Alive branded him as "the mental health person who writes non-fiction" but he adamantly claims he has written more books about Father Christmas than about mental health. In the interview, Haig lays down the basis for his writing as a mental health advocate: he was just a person "who went through an experience, came out of that experience, and wanted to make other people feel less lonely and slightly more hopeful in their experience". He claims there is a responsibility to storytelling, especially with mental health, as people get in touch with their own stories to share of similar experiences. However, he repeats intently that he doesn't see The Midnight Library as a mental health book, but as a novel where the central character has mental health issues. This distinction is an important one to make, especially to Haig, who champions separating your mental illness from who you are.
Haig's The Midnight Library first published on August 13 2020 is a Number One Sunday Times Bestseller. It has been in the top ten in the Bestseller list for ten weeks and was chosen as one of Goodreads' Best Books of 2020, winning by just five votes against Fredrik Backman's Anxious People (2020) in the Best Fiction category with 72,828 votes in total. Despite its immense success, Stadlen and Haig did not focus on the book very much in the interview itself. There was a larger discussion at play, one more about social media and the mental health crisis in the UK, one Haig deems a pandemic in itself. As someone deeply interested and involved in mental health stigma and advocacy, this was not a problem for me. It only enriched the interview and provided such an in-depth analysis of the context surrounding Haig's The Midnight Library.
In the interview, Haig talks about how he has faced criticisms over writing about mental health issues and stigma, as people have claimed Reasons to Stay Alive takes advantage of mental health and that he wrote it for monetary purposes. Not that he had to justify himself, but Haig even made the memoir available on BBC Sounds in the form of episodes for free. I could only believe that these claims come from people who have not read Haig's memoir, as it's viable to say that this book provides one of the most honest accounts of mental health in the literary sphere. Haig's own personal experiences with mental health are what enhance his works on or surrounding this topic because the honesty connects with an audience who may have experienced something similar or are close to someone experiencing it. This is captured perfectly in The Midnight Library. It is a about so many different walks of life which probably everyone can relate to.
Stadlen and Haig discuss the processes behind writing The Midnight Library, to which Haig revealed a thorough amount of inside information about the book itself; the characters, literary choices and inspirations. The length of the interview worked perfectly for this, as Haig was never rushed nor interrupted, and the conversation flowed more naturally than an interview itself does. The longevity of the interview gave Haig the opportunity to go into as much or as little detail he wanted with his answers, which to me, proved to make a much more fulfilling and entertaining interview, especially about a book that you enjoyed so much and are interested in learning about (not even beginning to mention the interest it piqued in the writer in me).
One of the main things covered by Haig was the inspiration behind Nora's purgatory being a library. Along with 'The Book of Regrets' (an aspect within Nora's Library) it was something he had in the works long before he really began formatting the story together. The main message behind the choice of a library was that it is "our own kind of access to other worlds" which parallels to how Nora accesses the lives she could have lived - through different books. However, Haig also provides anecdotes on his writing processes and the creative choices for the book, and we discover that Nora was originally a male protagonist called Adam, modelled on Haig himself. Writing as a suicidal male character was too close to himself, recalls Haig; "when you look at your face in the mirror for too long, you have no idea what you look like. You can never properly know what you look like without being outside of your body."
Another thing that Stadlen and Haig focused on was the impact social media has on mental health. Social media is incredibly prevalent within society today, and now more than ever in the age of COVID-19 are we using it. Even before global pandemics it was clear that we as a generation are glued to social media. With the Apple feature Screen Time, we are being told everything about our activity on social media; from how long we've spent on certain apps, to how many times we've picked up our phone in a given day or even hour, and are still doing nothing to limit our contact with social media. Platforms like Instagram and Twitter are always criticised for ostracising people and their lives, and for breeding trolls and hateful abuse from behind anonymous screens.
Haig talks about the obsession with fame and fortune becoming mechanized and monetized, as more people are "presenting themselves" online rather than just being themselves. These ideas of life being presented in such a glamorous way are enhanced over social media, and inflict more harm than good, as seen in Nora's doubtful character in The Midnight Library. Social media plays a big part in her story, as she views a lot about herself in certain lives on social media and other friends and their lives away from hers, making her doubt her own. Haig compares this to the likes of X Factor (2004 - 2018) and Britain's Got Talent (2006 - Present) and how it presents the glamourized version of life with Simon Cowell the "genie" transporting you to the red carpets and paparazzi. It emphasises the idea that ordinary life is something to be "saved from" which is a harmful concept. He describes the use of social media and a consistent viewing of glamourised lifestyles as almost as a "tobacco":
"In 10-15 years' time we will really see [social media] as a health issue that has already started as we now have a better understanding of what mental health is in the personal aspect [...] we are starting to understand that social media might be the equivalent of tobacco mentally, or fast food mentally. We shouldn't ban these but begin to try to understand the effects."
In response, Stadlen remarks that we are almost encouraged to be "mini-Jesuses" - we are incentivized to put ourselves out there as people worthy of being followed. How is this not a damaging concept? The strain and pressure we are put under to be perfect and lead appealing lives can put extreme tension on our mental health, as well as our priorities - we begin to value numbers and followers more than our own intrinsic human worth. It becomes finite rather than infinite. By placing a numerical value on friendship, we are isolating ourselves as well as quantifying our lives numerically - which in Haig's words, can present you as a villain, especially on social media.
One thing Haig talked about that was specifically interesting was the use of short chapters in The Midnight Library. He claimed that the use of short chapters "appeal to the way that our brains are now" in terms of absorbing things quite quickly. Haig is a fan of shorter chapters and he's used them since his first novel. It can be argued that our brains are more inclined to read books with shorter chapters or bigger fonts because they're "easier" - we get through them quicker and feel a bigger sense of "achievement" in completing it.
As a fan of shorter chapters myself, I can see the direct links they have to social media. Shorter chapters are very much akin to social media posts in both the amount of content and how much we take in in shorter bursts. Information in small bitesize chunks is admittedly more appealing to people which is why Tweets, Instagram captions and Facebook posts are incredibly popular. Furthermore, reading for a lot of people with mental illnesses is a struggle - the lack of attention span that pairs with some illnesses like depression can prohibit full books being read or long chapters being completed. For The Midnight Library, it seems that Haig used his shorter chapters to aid this, so that this heartwarming piece of hope is accessible to everyone.
As someone who relies heavily on social media for interaction and connections to my friends, especially during COVID-19, sitting down away from social media to watch this interview was extremely detoxifying. The Midnight Library provided the same feelings, as the book does not directly interact with the toxicity of social media but keep it to the surface level of connecting with friends. And Haig isn't necessarily criticizing this; he claims that books and reading are a social thing: you're having deep level socialisation with the writer, albeit one sided.
The final question Stadlen asked Haig was as simple as this: "how is your mental health?". To me, that was so important, if not, the most important part of the interview itself. Talking can be difficult for the mentally ill, and for it to be questioned so simply in an interview proves as a stepping-stone in breaking the stigma. The Midnight Library is another one of those stepping-stones, and it should be mandatory reading.