[Mind redacted spoilers—highlight to reveal.]

According to the book’s back cover, “Between life and death there is a library.” Wrong. According to the book itself, “Between a life and a near death there is a library or whatever.” Stacked there are numerous copies of Stephen King’s 11/22/63, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake alongside a host of scratched-to-hell DVDs like It’s a Wonderful Life, Groundhog Day and Peggy Sue Got Married. Matt Haig’s is a hipster’s universe so there must be several vintage LPs of Archibald MacLeish reading Walden as well, because this is philosophy and certainly not science fiction, goddammit. Late fees are waived… if they even exist!

I never bought Haig’s grand scheme—does every dying person achieve so intricate a limbo? Do they get to meet “their daughter” from another life and manufacture zero affection while erasing a (true) mother’s (true) love? It’s bizarre that Haig has children of his own and could write so despicably of parenting and so sympathetically toward Nora during this examination of (inadvertent?) antiheroism. I hope Molly got to alter her own timeline and prevent Mummy from turning into a monster.

Gibson Haynes, MLIS: “A funny thing about regret is that it’s better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven’t done.” Of course Nora would revisit every landmark regret (laid out so obviously in the opening chapters) and rejigger history based on these single, concrete events—music, swimming, etc. But what about the infinite minor decisions we make every day? For example, if Nora moved to Australia after all (concrete event) and bought Cargo instead of Business As Usual (minor decision), would Izzy have survived? Meanwhile, what would my life be like if I never read this book? If I stopped reading after page twenty? Page two-fifty? Blame Haig for making the rules. Blame him, too, for ignoring them.

John Lydon, CPA: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Yes I do, for this was a two-star book until the predictable sell-out ending earned number three. I feel like a chump. All this chain of what-ifs did was confirm what we already knew: Dan is a jerk, Joe is complicated, Ash is a sweetheart. The end is never in doubt and yet it was handled well enough, charmingly enough, for me to rate it higher than, say, WM Akers’s similarly breezy Westside—talk about regret! Pity the poor Yellow Card Man. ⭐⭐⭐