Mindy Withrow

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Sorry I’ve been MIA for a few days! Busy working on volume 3 of our series. But I did promise you this review, so here are some brief comments. I’m hoping a few of you have read it too and will chime in…

The protagonist of Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven is Eddie, the maintenance man at a boardwalk amusement park. On his 83th birthday, Eddie is killed in an accident trying to save a little girl from a runaway ride car. The next thing he knows, he is somewhere other than earth, meeting five people who had been connected to his life in some way.

My first impression was that this piece was contrived. Albom relies on stock characters: Eddie is a widower with a knee blown out in the war; his beautiful wife, the only person who ever understood him, died young; his abusive father couldn’t appreciate his sensitive nature; his mother loved him but couldn’t stand up to his father; etc. For the price of lackluster characterization, Albom buys immediate familiarity and compassion on the part of his readers, enabling him to jump right into the story.

Much of the dialogue is predictable. A few lines are just bad; take this one, for example: “‘Strangers,’ the Blue Man said, ‘are just family you have yet to come to know.” What?

This is the kind of story writing coaches are trying to prevent when they insist on “show, don’t tell.” It is overwhelmingly moralistic, even the dedication, which includes Albom’s pronouncement that “everyone has an idea of heaven, as do most religions, and they should all be respected.” In case you somehow missed the moral, Albom comes right out and states in the last sentence of the epilogue that “the secret of heaven” is that “each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.”

A fine specimen of literature this is not. However, somewhere in the middle of reading, I realized I appreciated Albom’s purpose. Eddie is everyman; his life hasn’t gone exactly as he planned. “Something stepped in front of him, blocking his way, until in time he gave up on things, he gave up studying engineering and he gave up on the idea of traveling. He sat down in his life. And there he remained.” We know Eddie; we have compassion on him; we want his story to have a happy ending. At the end of his life, he wants to know that he contributed, that his life had purpose. It is one of the most universal of hopes.

Questions:
How does what Eddie learns about his purpose compare to biblical teaching about our identity and value?
What value does Albom’s moral have for everyday life?
How does this book compare with Albom’s first hit, Tuesdays with Morrie? (I haven’t read it.)

25. April 2006 by Mindy
Categories: Reviews | 8 comments