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Ash is a surgeon who lives in Bedford and has known Nora for several years. In Nora’s original life, Ash is merely a friend who once asked Nora out for a coffee. Nora refused, as she was still engaged to Dan at the time, but she later regretted it. At the beginning of the novel, Ash visits Nora’s flat and delivers the bad news that her cat Volts has died. He later appears in Nora’s “perfect” life: the life where she had agreed to the coffee date. In this life, Ash is Nora’s loving husband and the father of their child, Molly. While Nora is forced to leave her wonderful life with him, she still considers asking him out on a date when she returns to her original life, remembering how kind he was to her when her mother was in the hospital with cancer, and knowing that he’d make a great husband. Ash represents the possibility of Nora finding love again and maybe even starting a family in her original life. His kindness and concern for Nora make him a stark contrast to Dan, Nora’s previous love interest.
Ash Quotes in The Midnight Library
The The Midnight Library quotes below are all either spoken by Ash or refer to Ash. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2 Quotes
She knew she should be experiencing pity and despair for her feline friend—and she was—but she had to acknowledge something else. As she stared at Voltaire’s still and peaceful expression—that total absence of pain—there was an inescapable feeling brewing in the darkness. Envy.
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
7
Explanation and Analysis:
When Nora’s friend Ash visits her in the middle of the night and lets her know that her cat Voltaire has died, Nora feels that her sadness is tinged with jealousy, as she finds herself wanting to die as well. Aside from the first few chapters opening with a countdown to the time when she “decides to die,” this moment is the first major indication of Nora’s suicidal thoughts. Notably, Nora can’t help but focus on how peaceful her cat looks now, and how free of suffering he must be. This lets the reader know that Nora considers her life to be full of pain and suffering so immense that she longs to escape to a peaceful oblivion.
While the troubles and regrets of her life become clear in the next few chapters, this moment establishes right away that Nora is suicidal, and she doesn’t seem able to stop feeling that way. Her feeling of envy is described as “inescapable” as it grows inside her, demonstrating how her negative emotions have already spiraled out of control long before this upsetting incident with her cat. Nora later makes peace with her pet’s death and accepts that it isn’t her fault, but this scene sets the tone for the terrible day that follows, marking the beginning of Nora’s descent into a deeper and more intense depression.
Chapter 40 Quotes
She sensed that, for all the perfection here, there was something wrong amid the rightness. And the thing that was wrong couldn’t be fixed because the flaw was the rightness itself. Everything was right, and yet she hadn’t earned this. She had joined the movie halfway. She had taken the book from the library, but truthfully, she didn’t own it. She was watching her life as if from behind a window. She was, she began to feel, a fraud.
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
248
Explanation and Analysis:
In the seemingly perfect version of her life where she’d married Ash and had a child with him, Nora feels a swell of love for her daughter Molly, but feels as though she’s stolen this reality and doesn’t truly belong here. Nora had been living this life for weeks, but only now does her ongoing fear of being an imposter finally bubble to the surface. Even in a life as wonderful as this one, Nora finds an imperfection—and the imperfection is her. As much as she desperately wants to, she can’t really believe that she’s Molly’s mother, as she only stepped into this life a short while ago.
This moment of worrying self-doubt serves as one final reminder that Nora can’t escape life’s problems any more than she can escape herself. It also indicates that Nora isn’t fully satisfied with this life, as she knows that she’ll forget her original life and the Midnight Library when she’s found the life that’s truly right for her. But unlike her previous lives, which usually had distressing problems that scared Nora away, this “perfect” life is only made imperfect by Nora’s feeling of displacement and guilt at having stolen this life from another version of herself. Regardless, Nora still tries to live with this imperfection until she fades back to the Midnight Library, demonstrating that she’s finally willing to embrace a flawed life for the sake of her happiness.
Get the entire The Midnight Library LitChart as a printable PDF.
Ash Quotes in The Midnight Library
The The Midnight Library quotes below are all either spoken by Ash or refer to Ash. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2 Quotes
She knew she should be experiencing pity and despair for her feline friend—and she was—but she had to acknowledge something else. As she stared at Voltaire’s still and peaceful expression—that total absence of pain—there was an inescapable feeling brewing in the darkness. Envy.
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
7
Explanation and Analysis:
When Nora’s friend Ash visits her in the middle of the night and lets her know that her cat Voltaire has died, Nora feels that her sadness is tinged with jealousy, as she finds herself wanting to die as well. Aside from the first few chapters opening with a countdown to the time when she “decides to die,” this moment is the first major indication of Nora’s suicidal thoughts. Notably, Nora can’t help but focus on how peaceful her cat looks now, and how free of suffering he must be. This lets the reader know that Nora considers her life to be full of pain and suffering so immense that she longs to escape to a peaceful oblivion.
While the troubles and regrets of her life become clear in the next few chapters, this moment establishes right away that Nora is suicidal, and she doesn’t seem able to stop feeling that way. Her feeling of envy is described as “inescapable” as it grows inside her, demonstrating how her negative emotions have already spiraled out of control long before this upsetting incident with her cat. Nora later makes peace with her pet’s death and accepts that it isn’t her fault, but this scene sets the tone for the terrible day that follows, marking the beginning of Nora’s descent into a deeper and more intense depression.
Chapter 40 Quotes
She sensed that, for all the perfection here, there was something wrong amid the rightness. And the thing that was wrong couldn’t be fixed because the flaw was the rightness itself. Everything was right, and yet she hadn’t earned this. She had joined the movie halfway. She had taken the book from the library, but truthfully, she didn’t own it. She was watching her life as if from behind a window. She was, she began to feel, a fraud.
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
248
Explanation and Analysis:
In the seemingly perfect version of her life where she’d married Ash and had a child with him, Nora feels a swell of love for her daughter Molly, but feels as though she’s stolen this reality and doesn’t truly belong here. Nora had been living this life for weeks, but only now does her ongoing fear of being an imposter finally bubble to the surface. Even in a life as wonderful as this one, Nora finds an imperfection—and the imperfection is her. As much as she desperately wants to, she can’t really believe that she’s Molly’s mother, as she only stepped into this life a short while ago.
This moment of worrying self-doubt serves as one final reminder that Nora can’t escape life’s problems any more than she can escape herself. It also indicates that Nora isn’t fully satisfied with this life, as she knows that she’ll forget her original life and the Midnight Library when she’s found the life that’s truly right for her. But unlike her previous lives, which usually had distressing problems that scared Nora away, this “perfect” life is only made imperfect by Nora’s feeling of displacement and guilt at having stolen this life from another version of herself. Regardless, Nora still tries to live with this imperfection until she fades back to the Midnight Library, demonstrating that she’s finally willing to embrace a flawed life for the sake of her happiness.
