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The Midnight Train
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Overview
A new novel from the Midnight World of #1 bestselling author Matt Haig
If you could relive one moment from your life, what would it be?
For Wilbur Budd, it would be his honeymoon in Venice, when he was at his happiest. Fifty years later, now a successful businessman made rich by his dogged commitment to work, he’s haunted by all he’s left behind: his hometown, his best friend, even the wife he adored. Then, when Wilbur collapses from a heart attack, he finds himself not in a dark tunnel or a library, but in a train station. Aboard the Midnight Train, he has one last chance to journey back through the formative moments of his life, in which one person appears again and again: Maggie Shaw, the girl who always offered him a warm smile, the only person who seemed to understand him. But is it already too late to find his way back to her? Back to those sunlit days in Venice?
The Midnight Train is a novel of wonder and transformation, of love and regrets and success and fate, from the world of The Midnight Train. It explores the ways in which we all make mistakes and the ways we might learn to live with them. Are you ready to board the ride of your life?
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780593833377
- ISBN-10: 0593833376
- Publisher: Viking
- Publish Date: May 2026
- Dimensions: 8.36 x 5.68 x 1.35 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.79 pounds
- Page Count: 304
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Søren Kierkegaard’s adage, “Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forward” provides the backbone for Matt Haig’s wise and deeply empathetic novel, The Midnight Train. A welcome companion, but not a sequel, to his 2020 book The Midnight Library, the novel embeds an array of provocative questions about what it means to live a good life inside a heartfelt story of one man’s failures and successes in that quest. When British bookstore magnate Wilbur Budd dies at age 81, his journey into the afterlife finds him aboard the eponymous steam train as a 29-year-old—the age at which he’s told he “came closest to your true self”—under the guidance of Agnes Bagdale, former owner of the Sheffield, England, bookstore whose purchase laid the foundation for Wilbur’s bookselling empire. As the train transports Wilbur through time, he’s allowed glimpses of his life—among them an impoverished childhood after his father died in combat in World War II, his marriage to his childhood friend Maggie and its heartbreaking dissolution, and his considerable, if lonely, business success. The rules of his journey—one “everyone goes on”—require Wilbur (or “the Ghost,” as he’s known) to refrain from any interference in those events upon pain of risking his place in eternity. It’s only when he decides to cast off that restriction that the novel finds its emotional center, raising the stakes for him as he confronts the key moments of his past and considers how attempting to alter them might ripple into an unimaginable future. As he relives eight decades of joy and sorrow, Wilbur comes to understand that “the only way to learn is to live,” but that’s far from the only precious insight to be derived from this enchanting tale. The beauty of Haig’s fanciful but firmly grounded storytelling is that he doesn’t compel readers to swallow a set of predigested concepts about the elements of a worthy, fulfilling life. Instead, through Wilbur’s story, he gently offers us an opportunity to reflect on our own achievements and missteps, recognizing that while we can’t rewrite the past, we possess the power to craft a more meaningful present and future.
Read our Q&A with Matt Haig about his bookstore and library takes.
Søren Kierkegaard’s adage, “Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forward” provides the backbone for Matt Haig’s wise and deeply empathetic novel, The Midnight Train. A welcome companion, but not a sequel, to his 2020 book The Midnight Library, the novel embeds an array of provocative questions about what it means to live a good life inside a heartfelt story of one man’s failures and successes in that quest. When British bookstore magnate Wilbur Budd dies at age 81, his journey into the afterlife finds him aboard the eponymous steam train as a 29-year-old—the age at which he’s told he “came closest to your true self”—under the guidance of Agnes Bagdale, former owner of the Sheffield, England, bookstore whose purchase laid the foundation for Wilbur’s bookselling empire. As the train transports Wilbur through time, he’s allowed glimpses of his life—among them an impoverished childhood after his father died in combat in World War II, his marriage to his childhood friend Maggie and its heartbreaking dissolution, and his considerable, if lonely, business success. The rules of his journey—one “everyone goes on”—require Wilbur (or “the Ghost,” as he’s known) to refrain from any interference in those events upon pain of risking his place in eternity. It’s only when he decides to cast off that restriction that the novel finds its emotional center, raising the stakes for him as he confronts the key moments of his past and considers how attempting to alter them might ripple into an unimaginable future. As he relives eight decades of joy and sorrow, Wilbur comes to understand that “the only way to learn is to live,” but that’s far from the only precious insight to be derived from this enchanting tale. The beauty of Haig’s fanciful but firmly grounded storytelling is that he doesn’t compel readers to swallow a set of predigested concepts about the elements of a worthy, fulfilling life. Instead, through Wilbur’s story, he gently offers us an opportunity to reflect on our own achievements and missteps, recognizing that while we can’t rewrite the past, we possess the power to craft a more meaningful present and future.
Read our Q&A with Matt Haig about his bookstore and library takes.