by:
Mitch Albom Average Rating:
Product Description:Part melodrama and part parable, Mitch Albom's
The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all told about the same man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement Park. As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical business at the park. Albom then traces Eddie's world through his tragic final moments, his funeral, and the ensuing days as friends clean out his apartment and adjust to life without him. In alternating sections, Albom flashes back to Eddie's birthdays, telling his life story as a kind of progress report over candles and cake each year. And in the third and last thread of the novel, Albom follows Eddie into heaven where the maintenance man sequentially encounters five pivotal figures from his life (a la
A Christmas Carol). Each person has been waiting for him in heaven, and, as Albom reveals, each life (and death) was woven into Eddie's own in ways he never suspected. Each soul has a story to tell, a secret to reveal, and a lesson to share. Through them Eddie understands the meaning of his own life even as his arrival brings closure to theirs.
Albom takes a big risk with the novel; such a story can easily veer into the saccharine and preachy, and this one does in moments. But, for the most part, Albom's telling remains poignant and is occasionally profound. Even with its flaws,
The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a small, pure, and simple book that will find good company on a shelf next to
It's A Wonderful Life.
--Patrick O'Kelley
Rating:
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BUY THIS
I have never read Tuesdays With Morrie and would now love to. This book was awesome. I finished it in one night between Kansas and Ohio. I disagree with anyone who says that the characters are too simple. The simplicity gives this book a true-life appeal. The message is so powerful and makes us examine the future and life itself. Borrow it from someone if you have to.
Rating:
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inspirational, and makes you wonder.....
Have I made a difference to somebody? when?! very easy reading, touch you directly at heart, make me tought about which moments had been the really ones...
great book!
Rating:
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It was a good book
I have to say this was a good book, although my favorite is still Tuesdays with Morrie. For the most part I think what this book does is it provides a person with comfort in knowing that when you die you are not alone in your journey to the afterlife. It also reminds a person to not take life for granted and to value the people you do have in your life. Although I found this book to be slow in some parts it was a good book overall.
