Matt Haig on ‘The Midnight Library,’ Mental Illness and Winnie-the-Pooh

If you couldn't tell, that is Taylor Swift, who hasn't saffered an interview like this in a long time.

“I'm John Keramonica, one of the critics behind the New York Times' 30 greatest living American songwriters project.”

We interviewed some of the songwriters on our list, and these are not ordinary conversations. Watch all the video interviews for free, and check out the entire 30 greatest living American songwriters project at NYTimes.com/30Gradest or in the app. I'm Gilbert Cruz, and this is The Book Review from the New York Times. Today on the show, we've got some book recommendations for you. We're going to get into those a bit later. But first, it's author Matt Hague.

Matt, you live in Brighton? Yes, Brighton. He's most known in the United States for his smash hit The Midnight Library. That's the story of a woman who has reached a breaking point.

“She ends up in a library filled with books that each hold a different version of her life.”

If she opens one, she can step into the life she would have lived if she had made different decisions.

That book was published in 2020, and it became hugely popular, selling more than 10 million copies worldwide.

Matt is now out with a new book, something he sees as kind of a sibling to the Midnight Library. It's called The Midnight Train. I'd love to start before we talk about the Midnight Train with the Midnight Library. Since they are connected, this is a book that really took you to another level in your career, at least in terms of your notable, how many people are reading your books.

It's a story about a woman named Nora Seed. She has experienced, as have we all, many regrets in her life. And on one particular night, she decides that she doesn't want to live anymore. She finds herself, however, in, quote, "The Midnight Library" For each book, such a great concept, each book transports Nora into a life that she could have lived.

And she made different decisions, the little decision trees had branched off from everything we choose.

“Where did that idea come from, this idea that you can open a book, and maybe enter a different version of your own life?”

Well, it was an idea that was bubbling away in various forms in my head. Age is an age, is an age. I mean, obviously there's sort of literary inferences. You've got the Sylvia Plafide here at the fig tree, branching off, you've got

Bart has his idea of blabbering fine libraries, and I always loved that sort of stuff.

With me, I was really struggling until I got the title, until I got the Midnight Library. I think it was the library of lost lives for quite a while. And I think, you know, unconsciously perhaps it came around from me, spending too much time on social media and on the internet. And that feeling that there's a life elsewhere, or that we're constantly comparing ourselves to something else.

So it was a pre-COVID book. I mean, it's often seen as a COVID novel because of when it arrived, but it was pre-pandemic. So it wasn't quite that existential moment. It was more this idea that we weren't living our best life. And I was doing a lot of wishful thinking, a lot of regretting, a lot of feeling like time was passing by. And in the UK, I was already a bit known for writing about mental health. And I'd done so in non-fiction, I'd written a memoir/slash,

a slight self-helpy territory book called Reasons to Stay alive. And that felt quite cathartic to write because that was kind of a release. But at the same time, non-fiction confines you in certain ways. You know, you're writing about real people, you're writing about your own parents. And so to take a story with mental health mental illness themes and to fictionalize it again, that was another thing I wanted to do with it. I do want to go back a few years because you made reference to a non-fiction book that you had written that had received good notices and claim in the United Kingdom.

It was a book about your younger years. And I was wondering if you could talk about how that book in particular came to be. So many of those themes are connected to so many of the themes and the fiction that you've been writing over the past few years. Yeah, absolutely. Of all the books I've written, it was the most accidental. It was called Reasons to Stay alive, which is a very typical me, sort of, two on the nose kind of touch, a little bit ambitious. But yeah, it was accidental in the sense that I was an obelisk that saw myself as a novelist. Then there was a charity in the UK, a very good charity called Booktrust.

And I was there writer and residents for a while, which basically meant I had to write a blog once a week.

And so I started with your basic blogs about being a writer writing tips.

And so I sort of like publicly came out in a small way on the internet as this person who'd been suicide or who had depression or I'd never really publicly talked about my mental health.

I wrote a single blog called Reasons to Stay alive at one point, and it was a sort of bullet pointed list of little sort of a feristic advice. And it went sort of semi viral, certainly in the UK book world, it sort of took off a bit of a share around and I had a lot of feedback about it. And a woman who worked in publishing, got in touch with me. She said, "I should write a book about it." Then one summer, feeling very happy in about 2014, feeling very different to my younger suicidal self.

I mean, I literally nearly ended my life at the age of 24, and it was a long way out of that. So I needed to be in a very different place, and I was in a very different place physically and emotionally, and I just poured it all out without ever having had therapy at this point in my life. Without knowing how I was neurodiverse, which I've since been diagnosed with autism and ADHD, without knowing about much really about my mind.

I wrote this very raw, quite clumsy at times, choppy book that was working out what it was as always going.

“But is this a book of advice or is this a book about memory and what I remember?”

And the only straight line through it was me remembering myself at 24, wanting to die, not out of any sort of pre-plan death wish, but being suddenly thrown into a state of panic and depression and physically really physical feelings, even the brains to felt physical a lot of the time, and the line between mental and physical was so sort of blurred. And I didn't know what was happening to me, so it was like being in a burning building. You don't plan to throw yourself out of a window, but suddenly the situation had massively changed.

So it was that, it was a desperate thing.

But had come on the back of years, I think, a low level depression, undying those masked mental health issues, mass by alcohol and drugs. It was very sort of cathartic to write all that stuff and to speak to that person. That was what I was sort of trying to do. I was trying to write a sort of message in a bottle back through time to this person, to see if there are words that could keep someone in that state or someone next to someone who's been in that state,

to see if anything could get through. A lot of the people who responded to it, obviously yes, a lot who had gone through something similar. But what really sort of touched me was people who had been struggling in relationships with like their children or parents or partner, understanding what had gone on in their sort of darkest moments.

“And I think that was another incentive of mine to provide a kind of window because I can remember being unable to articulate what I was feeling.”

Often it was like a physical having like a could hardly speak because of a sort of weight. And so I think to visualize it and to use a lot of similarities and metaphors to take this very invisible thing, which doesn't come with crutches, doesn't come with a wheelchair. You kind of have to describe it for people to empathize with it. And often in the state of depression, you're unable to describe it.

So hence stigmatizes and you know that inability to see someone. So I was trying to make the invisible visible in that sense. And I genuinely wrote it thinking that it was going to be a very niche book that only a few people. So the thing that's looking at back and it's obviously what you want. You want a lot of people to read your book, but because it was that book and not a fictional book,

it was suddenly me out there, it was suddenly me being reviewed. It was really me having to sell it right off of my live story, everything.

“So that I think I had a bit of time adjusting it and to sort of claim myself back as a novelist.”

At a point after having a breakdown when you were in your early 20s, you move back home as you write. And I'm particularly curious about this. You say that you moved into your childhood bedroom and you started rereading books and you had loved as a teenager. There's a book by guess we have to talk about books. And I'm curious what you were rereading, how it was making you feel, what you were getting out of it.

And then how that sort of led to you continuing to realize that you wanted to be a writer or that this is what you were meant to do.

I mean it wasn't just children's books or some classics on there as well.

“But it was basically books like proper childhood books like Winnie the Poo and the House at Poo Corner and teenage books like the outsiders and things like that.”

And why I could read them was because everything else in terms of television magazines. I found it so over visually over stimulating and I was in such a stuff, it sounds pathetic, I was in such a sort of fragile state that books were the sort of like calm place. And the fact that they were all books I'd read before meant that I could retreat into a sort of time before I could retreat into that space before mental illness. And also it was kind of training as well. I was training my mind to concentrate. To read was like, you know, it was like strength training of a mind in terms of trying to build up attention.

And children's books are great for that because they can lead you in, you know, they're not asking you to come to it. They sort of like meeting you where you are. It was like building myself up again. It was like so sort of like going back and there's something pure about the way you read a book as a child.

“And even now even in the sort of midnight books I try and have that voice.”

I want the sort of best of both worlds where you have the freedom to write about whatever subject you want as you would do in a novel for adults. But also to have the freedom that comes with children's fiction, which is a sort of imaginative freedom where you can have fantasy trains and fantasy libraries and things. Children's books for adults. What were your early writing years like when did you say, you know, I'm going to really going to try actually to make a go of this.

Well, I always written and my mum's one of those embarrassingly proud mum's who's got the shoe box full of self illustrators attempt.

My early writing when I was a kid was always heavily heavily Americanized. It was more American than American, you know, it was like Westerns and there was always a cowboy called Jake in Arizona.

“And you know, it was just like as American, because everything I watched on TV was American, or every book I was reading was American.”

I had zero confidence in myself going up into as teenager. I wasn't the most academic teenager at school. You know, some of the teachers said I was special needs for certain subjects because I'd be staring at the space or chatting and just not concentrating on anything. So, you know, when I sort of spoke to a career's advisor about wanting to be a writer, it was just, you know, I wasn't from the sort of school where people went to the sort of universities where you'd imagine you'd go to be a writer.

So it happened in the moment really when after I was ill, I don't want to turn this into a therapy session, but I was still in the sort of agrophobic state. And although I'd had quite short-lived jobs previously, I was at a point now where I genuinely felt I couldn't go out to work at that point. This was very early in the sort of working from home revolution. There was a social media, the internet was very new. There weren't many options of what you did from home.

And so I thought, you know, ridiculously, I thought I'm going to make my money writing novels, which obviously didn't go down well with the parents or anything else about time. And to be fair, it took a long while before I saw any money from it, but the one thing I felt comfortable doing was writing. I suppose it's 22, 23 years ago. I started writing a very strange novel, which in America is called the Labrador Pacts, my title for it was the last family in England, which is what it's called here.

Very strange, quite pretentious young man's first novel about a, well, it's told from a perspective of a dog.

But it's not, but it's not a children's story. And it's about a dysfunctional family of humans falling apart. And it's to up the potentialsness a little bit further. It's a retelling of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1. We've overdores. I'm pretty sure.

And yeah, but I had fun writing it. I started to realize I like writing short chapters, which I still do. And I wasn't consciously thinking about depression or anxiety or worrying about the sky falling in. I was in the world that I was writing. I wouldn't necessarily recommend anyone to go and read that word.

You, um, in the midnight library, you know, Nora, the main character has all these interests. And one of them is philosophy.

The book is studied with all these quotes from famous thinkers. And one, of course, that keeps popping up is the American philosopher thinker Henry David Thoreau.

“What was it about him in particular that was important to have as the focus for this character?”

And why even put all these philosophical musings in the midnight library?

Well, I think Thoreau is like a very attractive figure for a 21st century mind that feels overwhelmed by modernity. And contemporary society, capitalism, everything else, just not necessarily the real man who he was. But the idea of Walden, the idea of going into the woods building a cabin retreating from society and then enriching yourself more.

“And I suppose the theme of the midnight library without being too spoilery is essentially about valuing the minimalism of your own existence.”

And seeing that is that, you know, the things that look shiny like the Olympic medals or the high flying careers or the infinite riches, you know, they might not be the answer.

And maybe the answer is sort of already inside doing retreating. And I feel like Walden in particular, it's about the practicalities of nature and living in nature, but it's also on that spiritual level about stripping everything else away and seeing what's there. We're going to take a short break, and then Matt Hague talks about his new novel The Midnight Train, in which an 81-year-old man boards a magical train that allows him to relive the most significant moments of his life. We'll be right back.

Some songs that I've written, I started on a piano that happened with only one for Christmas as you. If you couldn't tell, that is Mariah Carey. I'm John Caramonica, one of the critics behind the New York Times is 30, greatest living American songwriters project. We interviewed some of the songwriters on our list, including Taylor Swift, who hasn't sat for a video like this in a long time. These are not ordinary conversations. You're going to watch these videos and learn about intimate approaches to craft in ways that you rarely have access to.

My mom got me this notebook, and I was just writing it really small because I didn't want anybody to read what I was writing. Okay, jazzy's teenage notebooks. I need to see those. Watch all the video interviews for free, and check out the entire 30-gradest living American songwriters project at NYTimes.com/30gradest or in the app. And let us know if you agree with our picks. I bet you won't. The phrase and a term that has become very popular in the past couple decades, of course, is world building. What was the impetus to take your midnight library world for lack of a better description and extend it or you know, complicated in some way and present a different perspective to the way that someone might re-experience their life or experience their life in a different way.

Good question. All I can say to answer that is it happened very organic. It didn't happen in a, I'm going to write a sequel sense. And it's not a sequel. It's a companion sure at best or a sibling. And I like to call it a sibling. The midnight train started as a very, very different novel. I mean, all my books sort of end up with different titles and different things.

“The midnight train originally started as a novel called The Memory Thief. And it was quite dystopian science fiction about AI. The only thing that's been just preserved from that first draft is the fact that there's a character called Agnes.”

And also, there's a honeymoon in Venice. Everything else was new and sort of redrafted. And along the way, it became something else that became this, you know, about your life flushing before your eyes. And then it was a vehicle for that a train and that came in a minute was the yesterday train. And then I was starting to talk about the science of your life flushing before your eyes. And I was starting to realize that I was actually having an argument a little bit with the midnight library. I feel like it's coming to a different conclusion about life and it has slightly different lesson.

I feel like the midnight library is very much just about acceptance. And I agree with that. I agree. We shouldn't always imagine the grass is green there and stuff like that. But I feel like this book represents a desire to act or to change things.

So this one is something different. It's saying let's try and step off the train. Let's try and change things. So in its own subtle gentle way it's having a little falling out with the midnight library. I have to imagine this a question that you will get a bunch but I have to ask because the idea of the book demands it which is have you given thought to the moments you would like to look at again in your life. You need to change them. You don't need to intervene just observe. Yeah, I'm going to be boring and go quite recent history. I would go back to the sort of early parenting years because it was just the era before everyone video did everything. So we don't have much sort of video content of that.

And I don't have much memory. Like career was just getting off the ground. I'd just been dropped by a publisher and then found a new publisher and I was just focused on providing and doing all that stuff. And so I thought of regret not being out. I didn't have been recently with a British poet. You may not be aware of called Harry Baker and he's just written a lovely sweet poetry collection. Each page, each poem is a different day in the first 100 days of his baby son, I think, life. And so just remember, record and I was thinking, oh, I wish I'd written something down that happened every single one of those days because those early times just go down, right, but just not just fast, but it's kind of as impressionistic blur and you can't and it's very hard to sort of remember.

“So I wouldn't mind looking back at that. I think if I went right back to childhood I'd find that quite, quite distressed, sure. I wasn't a happy teenager, particularly. I think before that I've been quite happy.”

I've been at quite a small village school and stuff that when I went to big school, I struggled fitting in. I was, you know, in Britain there's a lot of sort of class dynamics and I was like this very quite tough school. And I was seen as quite posh because my mum was a teacher and my dad was an architect and I sort of struggled fitting in there and I was often quite, sort of like, down with limo bow and I got into shoplifting and I ended up getting arrested for shoplifting at the age of 16. And so I was a bit of a delinquent for a while. I was same time as retreating to the library and being bookish. I was a strange combination. So not happy times at that point in time and not, you know, giving my parents quite a lot of,

“quite a lot of grief as well. So not there. But the thing is about having a sort of like difficult teen years, I think Graham Green said that childhood is like a miserable childhood. It's the bank you keep on pulling.”

Absolutely, my childhood wasn't that miserable all the time, but how to enough of that in my teenage years to socialite. Okay, I can write for a process. Yeah, that quote is the only thing that makes me feel good about certain years in my childhood as well. So thank you for bringing that up.

We're approaching the end of our conversation here. Matt, it's been a wonderful conversation. I want to turn to our weekly segment.

The New York Times book review for more than a decade has asked authors knew an old a recurring set of questions about their reading.

“It's a series we call by the book and Matt Hague. I have some extremely specific questions for you. Are you prepared to answer them?”

I am prepared to answer them. Okay, first question. What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

I think if you look at my shelves, you'd be surprised. I've got a lot of very strange history books. Like I've got the history of the amusement park and I've got the history of Las Vegas architecture. And I've got lots of sort of pop culture history kind of books. It is a niche of mine that I'm very interested in. It's very less surprising. I've got lots of music biographies and things like that. But my dad was an architect.

So I'm kind of interested in architecture history. So I've got a bit of that. I've also got quite a lot of manga because my son's got me into manga.

Very cool. So that might be surprising. What is your favorite book that you think no one else has heard of? I'm going to choose one called Paris Trends by Jeff Dyer. Not much happens apart from four young people. I think Americans and British and French are in Paris hanging out together, getting clubbing together, chatting together. It's very 90s. It absolutely summed up my life at that point in time. It just captures Paris. It captures a lot of talk about jazz in it.

There's a lot of places to go. But I think Paris Trends would be it. So that was a novel I read at a time when I was hard reading anything and it got through.

I'm not many people. I don't think no of it even if I've heard of Jeff Dyer. So I'd say Paris Trends. That is a great recommendation. Jeff Dyer is just one of the most diverse authors there is. He's written so many books that are sort of all different. OK, Matt, what is the best book that you've ever received as a gift? Best book I've ever received as a gift. I've got it here. For those who can actually see this, I am holding up a Alice's Adventures in Wonderland from the 19th century.

But not a first edition, a last. It is possibly a third or fourth or fifth edition. It's from 1890. So it's pretty near over two decades after it was published.

But this is from my grandmother on my dad's side and it was from her grandmother. So it's the closest thing I've got to a family heirloom, and it's a free book looking at us as adventures.

“OK, make sure you know what was that one. Matt, what books do you find yourself returning to time and again?”

I would say two different ones. I would say invisible cities by Hala Calvino, which is basically every page is a different city. And it's an imagined city by fantastical cities. The actual setup is Marco Polo talking to Kubla Khan about his travels, but essentially he's just talking about Venice and they're all imaginary fantastical versions of Venice. And sort of open it up on any page and disappear into a fantastical city. So it's like a travel book for the imagination. I love that. And it's very rereadable because it's not really a book with a story.

You can just sort of pick it up anyway. I'd also say, you know, lots of children's books, but I'll go with Winnie the Pooh or the House of Pooh Kona because I think you read it as child and you are just enjoying the adventures and when you read it as an adult. Obviously, but obviously didn't depths. And I'm fascinated by a male and the fact that he had a very sort of troubled life who probably had what we would call PTSD, you know, shell shot from the war and he'd created the world of a hundred acre wood to sort of retreat into that.

So it's incredibly sort of designed to be a comforting read and it's got a lot of wisdom. And I also like the fact that each character is a kind of now looking at a 21st century lens

is this kind of mental health archetype. You've got anxiety with piglet. You've got depression with ear. You've got this sort of neurodiverse that you're coming in with like kangaroo and tigers ADHD. So you can see in so many different lights and in just philosophical terms as well. So I'd say Winnie the Pooh's good one to get back to as well.

“I believe it's celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year. Yes, it is. It's been lots of sort of the celebrations on BBC radio and things, but yes, I think so.”

But I think the original bad isn't the original bad in New York. Well, yeah, the Queen of England is visiting New York next week, I believe, and it's possibly going to pass by the New York Public Library. Oh, I'm putting it in. And take it back. Maybe give us steel. It just gives you the oceans 11 times. It turns out the Queen did not steal the bear. Instead, she brought with her a replica of the original little room. Who bears smallest friend and put to rest the question of whether AA millions original stuffed animals would return to their homeland.

Who, hey, glit, tigger, e-or, kangaroo are on permanent display at the New York Public Library. Coming up next, my colleague Jen Harley has some recommendations for your reading list, especially if you like books by Matt Hague.

“Did you know that India is the biggest adopter of crypto globally and that Estonia offers online voting in all its elections?”

I'm Katherine Benholt, host of The World, a new daily newsletter from the New York Times. I spent 20 years reporting from more than a dozen countries, and it occurred to me one day, you know, what kind of newsletter would I like to read? I don't live in the US. I want something that's written especially for global audience. Something that helps me understand what's going on and why it matters, and ideally something that doesn't just get me down. The world is just that. Each weekday morning, we bring the biggest stories, dispatches from my colleagues on the ground, and a few delightful surprises with video too.

Okay, Jen Harland. Hello. Hello. Hi. I asked you to come on the show because you're one of the editors at the book review, who is particularly good at recommending books to people.

“We tell you what we're looking for, what we've liked, what we've read recently, and then you say, how about these?”

It is my favorite game both at work and outside of work. You're perfectly matched here. I'd love to hear your thoughts on some books to read that are similar to the work of Matt Hague. So I think when people talk about Matt Hague's books, there are few things that really draw the fans of those books to them. They are life-affirming, they're heartwarming, they have some sort of like inherent tenderness at their core, and also maybe have a little bit of a speculative element, not full blown fantasy, but there's something funky going on with time or space.

Or portals into other parts of your life.

And so those are sort of the things I'm thinking about with these books that I'm going to talk to you about today.

“The first of which is the invisible life of Adi Leru by V. E. Schwab, who is predominantly a fantasy writer. She's also written some sci-fi.”

She had a book about vampires last year. She's written about superheroes. She's written about wizards. Rue is, I would say, probably the least heavy fantasy of her book. So again, if you like that sort of like light touch of magic that a Matt Hague book brings, but you don't want to learn any tensileable names or encounter any dragons. Don't worry. There's not many of that here. Noted. So Adi is a young woman living in the early 1700s in France. Very unhappy with her circumstances. She's being forced into a marriage. She doesn't want to be in.

And she essentially makes a deal with the devil, who in this case is a god of the night who she names Luke. And the bargain. She, you know, a classic god demon name. I don't know why that name strikes me. It's so funny of this context, but it does. And so Luke offers her a deal. She can live forever. She can live all of the different lives. She wants to live. She doesn't have to be confined to her circumstances. But everyone she needs will immediately forget her. So she agrees to this and essentially spend centuries moving through the world like a ghost. She has these little touches of influence on people's lives. She inspires art. She inspires music.

But isn't able to make any sort of lasting human connection. And then one day in the 21st century, she stumbles into this youth bookstore in New York City owned by this guy named Henry who sees her and remembers her.

She's not really sure what is going on there. This has never happened to her in centuries of life.

And it turns out that he has made his own bargain with Luke. He had gone through some disappointments, including a proposal that did not go well. It was when it was in a very dark place. Didn't feel like he had a reason to go on living. And so he made this deal with Luke that whenever people see him, they see what they desire most, which in at East case is to be recognized and remembered their sort of this like perfect these two perfect puzzle pieces who fit together. There's a lot of the midnight library in here.

Yeah, yeah, definitely you're, again, that sort of like touch of something supernatural, but not really in this idea of like finding your your puzzle piece and also about like what are the things that make life worth living. Yeah, they're catch with Henry as that he turns out he has a very short amount of time left to live. And so he and Adi end up in this race sort of to try and save his life to maybe try and get freedom for themselves out of this bargain it's this magical story about human connection and what you would do for someone he love.

Tell us about another book that you feel like you would recommend people who are looking for those the sweet sweet Hague vibes. Yes, another very Hague Esk book. So turn it. Hey, hey, a Hague horrific couple. Maybe we'll still keep working it. This is one of my all-time favorite books and one of the books I recommend to everyone I know, which is the history of love by Nicole Krauss.

“This book came out in 2005. I think some of the hardest characters to get right in literature are often children and old people.”

They can be very one note and this book has two unforgettable narrators. One of whom is 14. One of whom is in his 80s. I believe an older man and both of whom are so memorable and so lively and wonderful. You have Leo Gerski who is a Holocaust survivor. He was a locksmith for most of his life in his lived in New York and has also a writer who wrote this amazing book called The History of Love, which was inspired by this woman Alma who was the love of his life. And though they both survived the war, they lost each other in that process and he's basically spent his whole life having lost the love of his life and tried to figure out how to see move forward, how to see build a meaningful life.

He is kind of a hoarder. He lives in this apartment that's full of piles and stuff and has this big fear of dying one of those horrible New York deaths where it'll take several days before the smell brings people to the apartment.

“He's afraid of being forgotten and disappearing. So he takes a job as a nude model for a figure drawing class.”

So that at least for an hour a week he will be seen by people. But it's not expected. Maybe an extreme reaction. That's an area. And he also has this really beautiful friendship with Bruno who was his neighbor back in Poland.

Who he thought died in the war. They didn't see each other and then there's this amazing moment where they run into each other outside of grocery store.

In New York and rekindle their friendship. Bruno moves into this building and they've developed this kind of more code where they tap on the radiator to check in on the other person makes sure that they're alive. So that's one story and then you have Alma who is 14. Her dad has died of pancreatic cancer and she is a very percosis, very smart girl, but trying to sort of hold her family together. Her mom is a translator who has never really moved on from this loss and Alma decides that she's going to make it her mission to try and find her mom love again.

A mystery at the heart of this book about the ennoble called the history of love that kind of pops up in different places, but it's really about again about like loss and grief, but also the different kinds of love.

They can fill our lives, not just romantic love, but also love between parents and children and friends and all those again those little wonderful little things that make life worth living.

“We talked about VE Schwab. Now I think we should move to another recommendation by TJ Kloon. Another one of my favorite from the fantasy sci-fi world.”

Let's talk about the initials here. Tell me about TJ Kloon. So TJ Kloon, whenever someone asks me like I want a comfort read, I want a book that's going to like make my give me that like warm, happy heart feeling. TJ Kloon is one of the first people I think of and I love a lot of his books, but I'm actually going to talk about his newest one, which just came out in April. It's called We Burned So Bright. It is a little bit more sci-fi than his typical books. It's basically an apocalypse road trip novel, which may not sound terribly heartwarming off the jump, but basically the premise of the book is there is a black hole that's headed towards Earth.

We've tried everything. There's no solution and so in 30 days the world is going to end. We're all going to get sucked into a black hole and burn up into and go into the ether wherever people go after the heat death of the universe. And you have Don and Rodney who are two men in their 70s who've been married for several decades living on these coasts and they decide to pack up their lives in their RV and drive across the country because there's some sort of important promise or thing that they feel like they have to do before the world ends and they and everyone they know dies.

And so you spend the book traveling across the country with them as they're reflecting on their life and relationships and the sort of big loss that's at the part of their story you're trying to figure out as the book goes along what it's about. Many people on their journey who all have very different reactions to knowing that their time is limited. Some people go full hedonism and are like I'm going to do all of the drugs and have all of the sex and go skinny dipping in a lake every night and who cares.

There's no point to anything so we're all descending. Some people go in a really dark direction and there may or may not be a serial killer who convinced that she's doing people favor by killing them early so they don't have to experience death by black hole. Some people really lean into tribalism, some people are looting and some people react with incredible kindness and decide that they want to use whatever time they have left to enjoy all of the things that have made humanity what it is.

It is a sad book but also really tender about how all the ways that humans can be both selfish and horrible but also unexpectedly generous and kind.

Yeah, which path would you take?

“I think there would maybe be like a temptation to go in the like, well the world's ending there's no consequences let's do whatever for a little bit but then I think ultimately I don't know.”

And not to like bring the pandemic into the conversation again in 2026 but I feel like if that is any guy to be like I'd want to be with the people that I love and to make the most of that time ideally somewhere beautiful probably not as much as I love New York I think I would want to get away from the millions here if the world is ending. That's very nice. Tell me about your next recommendation for people who are looking for you know something a little Matt Hagi a novel love story. So I as followers of the book review may hurt I am also a romance reader I cover a lot of romance and I think the reason that a lot of people are drawn to romance novels is similar to the reason why people are drawn to Matt Hagi book sometimes you.

And Ashley Postan is author who writes primarily what I would call paranormal romance but again with this sort of like light magical realism touch so no vampires no where worlds but.

Usually something something going on with time or space that's a little unmord from reality. A novel love story is about this woman named Elsie whose life has kind of fallen apart she has been left at the altar she's depressed she's been really living for this trip that she and her friends in her book club take every year where they have a weekend where they just go and read together.

“read together for a few days which is honestly like maybe my dream weekend credible.”

But at the last minute all of her friends bail on her and so she sort of like pick and herself up by her bootstraps and it's like I'm going to go do this on my own.

Drives into a storm almost runs this guy over and then finds herself in this very charming idyllic small town that seems strangely familiar and if she. Eventually realizes that she has somehow gone through some sort of portal and is in the world of her favorite cosy romance books series.

“So she recognizes all the landmarks like romance mega dune.”

It's yes yes exactly.

It's like romance on romance like and so she recognized she can see like all of her favorite couples whose book she's read but they're all living after their happily ever after is in this town.

And this is not a Christmas carol or it's a wonderful life kind of situation she is actually in the town interacting with people and starts to have these ripple effects on the characters and on the town. And there's one character there she cannot place who is anders who is the very grumpy owner of the bookstore classic romance hero trope and he has not appeared in any of the books. And is very unhappy with the way that she is disrupting the kind of homeostasis of this little pocket universe. But the more she gets to know him they she starts to start to figure out how she got to the town why she's trapped there how he might have gotten there and gotten trapped there and it becomes this very moving and like tender story about again like grief and healing and love and also.

Not just about the sort of stereotypical happy ending but about the real life that comes after that which can be messy and complicated but it is also more human and real in satisfying for that. Sounds very charming.

“It is it is very she is a very charming writer and if you like her she has a new book coming out on June 16th called the Someday Garden which is a secret garden again like a little a very teeny tiny pocket universe in this case.”

But a woman who moves to Maine to be the sort of head groundskeeper at this nature estate this like mansion with all these beautiful gardens that has some sort of mystical history people your strange rumors about the garden you can hear the voice of the people you love you can get lost in the hedge maze forever and end up somewhere strange. And she stumbles upon a secret pocket garden that nobody else seems to know about. So much you can like read a person know what they would like I feel like anyone listening to this who is intimate hey is going to come away with at least one book if they are going to love.

The book review is produced by Sarah Diamond, Amy Pearl and Patricia Sulbutton. It's edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Patre Rosado original music by Dan Powell and Alicia by E2 special thanks to Dahlia Haddad. We want to hear what you think about the show so send us an email at the book review at nytimes.com. I'm Gilbert Cruz thanks for listening.