very worth reading | The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Reading with Tequila | The Five People You Meet in Heaven | Mitch Albom

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	• The Five People You Meet in Heaven Mitch Albom Hyperion, 2003 - 198 pages average customer review:based on 1677 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Nicely emotional and compelling, but completely nonsensical

This is a story that will grab your attention and keep it, and the finish won't disappoint you. It may even make you cry.

The concept is that after we all die, we meet five people in the afterlife, one at a time, and each person tells us things about our life that we find eye-opening.

It is a damn stupid concept. Why five? What happens next? Where do we go next after these five people are done with their stories? Answer: there are five because the author wanted to write five. We don't care where we go next, where we spend eternity, because the concept of the book is that we are told five stories, and that's that. The author doesn't seem to realize that the more important issue is where we go when we die, not these five little interviews. So the book is sold to us as some important stories about heaven, but in fact it's just about making up five stories, and who cares about heaven.

The protagonist is Eddie Maintenance, the guy who is responsible for keeping the rides safe in an amusement park. He ends up getting killed by one of his rides, which is not much of an endorsement of his work, is it? He must be pretty awful if he gets killed by one of his own rides. That isn't addressed in the book though.

The big question is whether he succeeded in saving the life of the little girl who is standing right under where the ride is about to come crashing down. Will Eddie get there in time to save the little girl? The first four people he meets in heaven don't tell him because ..... because ..... because the author wants you to wait for that information until the end of his book. A bit hoky, no?

If you like emotional endings and you don't care if the book makes any sense or if it is transparently hoky and suspense-building, you will tend to enjoy this book more than if you are more critical and demanding of some sense and some integrity.

The first person that Eddie meets after his death is a blue man. Why blue? No particular reason. The blueness of the man has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the story. The guy is blue. He took too much silver nitrate and his skin turned blue. Isn't that interesting? That's why he's a blue man. Because Mitch Albom decided to throw in a blue man.

Another character he meets, another of the five, is the wife of the guy who built the amusement park. Why her? Who knows. No particular reason.

So, the story most definitely has weaknesses, and the biggest weakness is that it pretends to tell you about heaven but it actually doesn't tell you a thing about it, doesn't even try, so it is a bit of false advertising. It just tells you five stories, then sayonara, we're done, no more stories today kiddies.

But this book can make you cry. It is emotionally powerful. There's something strong here, which is why I gave it 3 stars despite its stupid concept.

And there is a wonderful lesson here, that although we may think we are doing something meaningless and beneath us, we may actually be doing something noble and meaningful, like Eddie, who is making rides that are safe for children, when someone more careless, someone less dedicated and talented, would be letting children die left and right from these rides. What could be more noble than saving the lives of children? Maybe even your stupid job is worth something. Maybe you yourself, dear reader, are not the useless nonentity you think you are.

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very worth reading

I was surprised to see that so many people wrote such mean reviews about this book. I thoght it was touching and well-written. I haven't yet read Tuesdays with Morrie, but now I want to.

Reading with Tequila

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a spiritual book, managing to take the reader on a journey through the afterlife without an obvious preachy religious stance.

Eddie is an average man. In his opinion, his life adds up to nothing more than seemingly random events that have had no effect to anyone. Basically, he believes that he was born, he existed and then he died and all of it was unimportant. Upon his death, he is greeted by 5 people whose lives he touched. Through speaking to them and reliving their deaths, he learned that he did effect the universe around him.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a surprisingly uplifting, heartwarming story when you look at how much death is focused on. Through the eyes of others, Eddie learned the true meaning of his own life. The book makes you consider your own life and makes you realize that no life is ever truly meaningless. Mitch Albom has proven again how great he is at being deep without being heavy. The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a short and light look at death and what comes next.

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Five People Paperback

This book shipped VERY quickly and when I needed to have it,for my son's school, it was here early. Thanks and look forward to ordering from you again.

Simple, Sad, Sweet Story About Life Hereafter

This is fiction. It is simple, sad, sweet... maybe even too neatly wrapped for a lot of people.... There's nothing special about the main character. That's kind of the point. The author was going for ordinary with a lowercase o. He asked himself questions along the lines of what if an ordinary person, who thought nothing about their insignificant little lives, got to heaven and found out that something they did changed the course of someone else's life? Basic premise, all lives intersect in many ways.

If you try to read too deeply into the book, you'll probably have religious issues with this presentation of heaven, but I view it like any fiction story. There are nice observations about people if you want something deep from the book, but it's not meant to be a religious commentary on life.

Enjoy the story for what it is. BTW, I heard the audiobook. It's a great story to have read aloud to you.

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Plot Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him, as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?" Personal Details Collection Status In Collection Index 10 Read It Yes Links Amazon US Product Details LoC Classification PS3601.L335F59 2003 Dewey 813/.6

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