| | |  | Amazon Kindle | Home » » » The Five People You Meet in Heaven | | | | | | | 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. | | | Product Details: | | | Average Customer Rating:
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208 of 233 found the following review helpful:
 I couldn't put this book down.Apr 07, 2004
By Kenneth Yeh
I just got this book today when someone recommended it to me and when I started reading it I couldn't put it down. I skipped dinner and didn't do my homework but it was just that good. It leaves you wondering if you ever made a difference in someone's life here on earth. Then it makes you wonder who the five people you will meet in heaven are. This book was truly inspirational. It makes you want to go out into the world and try and make as big as impact on people's lives. I recommend anyone to read this book whether you believe in heaven or not. It's an absolutely amazing book.
591 of 676 found the following review helpful:
A true and compelling study of the meaning of lifeNov 15, 2003
By Beth
Without going into the set-up of the story (which you can find in other reviews), I'll simply say this amazing little book is on my Christmas shopping list for those that are the dearest to my heart. This is a book I want to share with everyone! Not to scare anyone away from it -- by the end of this story, I was a sobbing mess! The first four of Eddie's people give little pieces of the puzzle, profound little tidbits to help him understand more about the events in his life. But his "fifth person" reveals Eddie's true purpose in life, a life that Eddie felt was a "nothing existence" on Earth. He learns from his fifth person that his life was an incredibly important piece of the tapestry of life's experience here -- one that meant more to people than he could ever have dreamed. A truly inspiring piece of American literature that EVERYONE should read!!
59 of 68 found the following review helpful:
Another life-defining book from Mitch AlbomOct 20, 2003
By Andy Tan
To tell the truth, after reading Tuesdays with Morrie from Mitch Albom, I did have high expectations for this follow-up.
And I must say that my expectations were more than surpassed by another winner from him.
The interweaving of Eddie "Maintenance"'s various aspects of life from his childhood, teenage years, courtship, military service, marriage, middle age to old age and finally the beginning of his journey through heaven was beautifully and intricately spun in this short tale.
The poetic descriptions of the various "steps" in heaven that Eddie traversed through in search for inner peace before his final resting destination and the 5 lessons he had to learnt brought to mind the eternal existentialistic questions of why we are here and what our life purpose is, in a quiet and non-intrusive manner. So much so that we can be prompted to examine our own lives more sympathetically.
The message I got from Mitch Albom at the end was that Eddie could have been anyone of us and that we do not need to wait for our turn to meet our five people in heaven to recognise that whatever we are doing now has meaning and has purpose in wonderful and beautiful ways and that we should never allow ourselves to belittle our lives.
Not quite the tearjerker as Tuesdays but Five People has certainly touched my heart and a few others in more ways than one. I hope that you will allow this beautiful book to touch yours too.
Kudos to Mitch Albom and a big thank you to his uncle Eddie for being the source of inspiration for this would-be classic.
God bless
42 of 48 found the following review helpful:
 Reassuring Mush about a Pointless PurgatoryApr 18, 2006
By J. Whelan
I read this because it was strongly urged upon my by a friend. It was a quick and painless read, but a waste of time. I will try to avoid spoilers.
It is about a saintly old codger named Eddie, who in the opening chapter dies heroically at the age of 83 attempting to save a child's life. (This, BTW, is exactly how I would like to die -- heroically, at the age of 83). He finds himself in a sort of afterlife, where he must meet five former mortals (all in some way connected to his earthly life) who will explain his past life to him, so that he can understand it better. Evidently, this routine of the five-explainers is something that every departed soul must endure (hence the title seemingly addressed to the generic reader), but it is a different five for everyone. Why it should always be five -- no more and no less --is apparently just an arbitrary decision of the author.
These five heavenly explainers serve as a framing device through wich the author tells us the story of Eddie's life, while still incorporating elements of Eddie's story that Eddie could not have known while alive. The revelations are often painful to Eddie. But apart from its usefulness as a non-linear storytelling device, it is hard to see the point of the purgatory that Eddie must endure, or of the phony wisdom that the explainers occasionally expound.
The overall lesson and theme is that everything is connected, and (in particular) that there were connections in Eddie's life that he was unaware of while alive. He learns, for instance, that his acts have, unbeknownst to him, caused tragedy for others, and that certain of his own fortunes and misfortunes were inextricably connected to each other. (Such latter revelations apparently make it easier for him to accept his misfortunes, but why it should matter now that he has reached the afterlife and his misfortunes are history is unclear). But the author states this connectedness lesson so broadly that it rings false. It may be true, ultimately, that all things are connected. But the universe is a vast and complex place, and (except by coincidence) everything cannot be connected in a way that a mere mortal will find meaningful.
Although the goal of Eddie's purgatory is a sort of enlightenment for Eddie, it does not seem to involve or require any kind of moral growth. As far as we can tell, Eddie never seems to actually done anything that the author regards as immoral. Eddie seemingly is not required to repent of anything, merely to understand. Even the tragedies Eddie learns he has unwittingly caused were not caused by any wrongdoing by Eddie, or, if his behavior was immoral, the author fails to make this clear or explain the moral rules on which his judgment was based. Indeed, it seemed to me rather unjust of these explainers to cause Eddie emotional pain by confronting him with tragedies he accidentally "caused" in the course of behavior that was not inherently wrong, and of which he is unaware until now. So even to the extent that they do inflict repentance and remorse on him (if that is the point) they are applying a skewed moral code in which right and wrong are judged on the basis of twists of fate and accidental consequences.
Although Eddie seems quite the saint and martyr, as far as we can tell, this has nothing to do with his arrival in Heaven. The author heavily implies that happened to him will happen to us all. Five people will explain things to us, we will then understand why our miserable lives had to be the way they were, then (apparently) we will find eternal happiness. This is very reassuring fantasy, and perhaps explains the books popularity. But it is not morally challenging, and it is not deep.
On the other hand, as relates to this life, the message seems potentially depressing and fatalistic. The moral can be read as "be satisfied with all your miseries, because they are a secret punishment for misdeeds you don't even know about."
If you want a far more insightful and morally relevant purgatory-explain-your-life tale (though one which literally takes place on Earth) try TIL WE HAVE FACES by CS Lewis.
25 of 29 found the following review helpful:
The Five People You Meet In HeavenDec 02, 2003
This hearty little 200-page book provokes the everlasting question, "What happens when you die?" to rise to familiarity among our thoughts once again. I have wondered where Mr. Albom was inspired to write a story such as this; with such intensity as was shown.
The story tells of an old man, named Eddie, who dies trying to save a little girl from a falling ferris-wheel cart at a carnival. Eddie goes to heaven, and with the help of five seemingly non-impacting people, he relives his life, point by life-altering point and he begins to understand why he lived and what his purpose on earth was.
With Mr. Albom's unique flashback technique of writing, this story comes alive within the imagination of it's readers.
A wonderful and deeply intense book and I recommend it to individuals who have read and loved Mr. Albom's previous book, Tuesday's With Morrie.
Many will learn to love and appreciate this book and I hope that reading this review will persuade YOU to read it as well.Thank You ... and Congratulations, Mr. Albom for writing a wonderful book.
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