The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Rating:
Summary: Touches your heart
Review: Having just lost my father last year I was looking for something comforting to read. This book will touch you in a very gentle and heart warming way. It takes you on a wonderful journey and makes you explore your life and the possiblity of lives you have touched along the way. Read it with an open mind and open heart and you too will be rewarded.

Rating:
Summary: An Impossible Read
Review: I'll admit, I sloggged through the ridiculously sentimental and poorly written "Tuesdays With Morrie" just so I could see what the fuss was all about. This book is so poorly written I had to literally force my self to read it. I wonder how it ever got published. If this is what the "average" reader finds intellectually stimulating, God help us all. A terribly, terribly wasted read.

Rating:
Summary: What A Wonderful Book!!!
Review: Dare I say this was the best book I've ever read? It reminded me
very much of the movie A Wonderful Life with Jimmie Stewart.

The first book I've read by this author, now I'll have to read
"Tuesdays With Morrie":)

All the books I've been reading strike a chord with me, but this
one, I felt that I could have been the main character. I felt
such a close relationship to the subject matter.

Eddie is a carnival repairman, and the story begins with his
death. He feels his life was nothing, but he meets five very surprising people who show him otherwise. Some of these people he didn't even know existed.

This was a very quick read, and one that I'd recommend to everyone. This reviewer rates it a five, because it's as good as
it gets:)

Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: I thought 'Tuesdays With Morrie' was good, this book is even better. Wisdom and lessons throughout. A hard to put down book until your finished.

Other fantastic books: Memoir Style books-Nightmares Echo, A Child Called It, Running With Scissors

Rating:
Summary: actually very interesting
Review: i passed over this book many times, simply b/c i didn't want to read a "preachy" "self-help" type book...but, then someone lent it to me, and i tried...i am so glad i read this book. the title is misleading. it's really about the 5 people eddie meets in heaven. i really enjoyed the story. it was a quick, easy read, but invoked a lot of thought. also, i was glad to see a story in which amusement park workers are portrayed positively.

Rating:
Summary: Eloquence has left the building!
Review: This book had a good plot along with a vision and possibility of Heaven that I had never considered. It's just my opinion that the descriptiveness was lacking to the point of sometimes wanting to put the book down despite the interest in the story. It was so to the point that it lagged and left you begging for something resonant just to get you through. It was a good book. It just didn't flow. So, to warrant my three stars I'll give you the following line from the book that I carried with me after I finally got through it.

"It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."

Rating:
Summary: Knowledge is Your Salvation
Review: This book is a gem.

Like all great stories it has metaphors we can associate with the realities of our lives. There are five such metaphors in Albom's story that touch upon ignorance, hate, resentment, longing, and guilt.

So, what's the lesson?

A great story must be able to give a perspective about life to better it. Five People, five lessons, five emotions, five perspectives, like the glistening facets of a gem, all intertwined and related to one another ending up in a needless trap we call worrying. Events in our lives happen for a reason, though not always good. But what makes us worry is not the bad outcome, rather lack of understanding why.

There is salvation in knowledge. While I'm telling you this, Albom is showing it in his story The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

Rating:
Summary: A Modern Classic
Review: People have taken to comparing new books to past success. "My Fractured Life" (Rikki Lee Travolta) is this decade's "Catcher in the Rye" (JD Salinger) they say. "Secret Life of Bees" (Sue Monk Kidd) is this decade's "Color Purple" (Alice Walker), it can also be said. What of "The Five People We Meet in Heaven" (Mitch Albom)? What great literary wonder should be consider this to be the reincarnation of? In the game of comparisons, I think we have to give serious thought to the notion that "The Five People We Meet in Heaven" is our decade's "A Christmas Carol" (Charles Dickens) because it is a view of life after it is essentially over, a validation of what cannot be undone, and yet with an uplifting end. Whether you agree with the specific title of my comparison or not, I am confident you'll find "The Five People You Meet In Heaven" to be with "My Fractured Life" and "Secret Life of Bees" as one of our decade's classics.

Rating:
Summary: Not the Best Guide to Heaven
Review: A soft read, with much imagination.But, if you want more than that, I would suggest picking up a book or two about people who have been there; i.e. 'Near-Death Experiences' such as Tiffany Snow ("Psychic Gifts in the Christian Life"), or the numerous research documents available through IANDS (International Association of Near-Death Studies). Imagination is fine - but this is the information age - getting a group synopsis of heaven through unrelated people with NDEs can get you a better window, without having to stretch it too much.

Rating:
Summary: Creative Parable About Heaven
Review: Mitch Albom's parable is not a book that is overly big on characters, plot or analysis. It does not use difficult vocabulary or attempt to give you an in-depth plot description, but what it does it synthesize a person's account of heaven into five chapters. A creative concept for a novel, it achieves its point mainly through its simplicity.

What is the point? Well, the point revealed will be different for each individual. My perception of the novel, in it essence, is that the past effects our future and that we, in some odd or unique way, are all connected with those around us whether we realize it or not. Ultimately, all events and people have an essential role in our lives, and that there is something better out there for us if we can address our issues in life.

Eddie, the book's protagonist, is a maintenance worker for an amusement park and gets into an accident that claims his life. He can't remember all the details of his last moments, but we follow Eddie into heaven where he, one by one, encounters five people from his past. These people were not necessarily the closest ones to him in life, but they all played a significant role in his being here. Within each of these people there is a message revealed that Eddie uncovers, a lesson about life and the relationships that he had in life. There is a progression from the first to the fifth person, and Eddie becomes closer to Heaven as he understands more and more with each story.

The difficult aspect of such a book is in expressing a message or lesson without becoming a lecture. Albom teeters on this edge, but I think he does a commendable job in keeping the situations and people involved in Eddie's life the focal point of the novel, as well as the descriptions and sensations that Eddie feels on his journey to Heaven. He tells the story, and lets the reader decide. For this reason some will like it, and others will want to put it down after a few pages. Personally, I thought it was a uniquely inspiring story and would recommend it to anyone.