Book Review on The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Book review

Red stream English

Mrs. Dunn

                                                            Mitch Albom

                 The Five People You Meet in Heaven

The book The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a very interesting book about life and death and the possibilities of afterlife. The Five People You Meet in Heaven opens your eyes up to a whole new level of things that could possibly happen when you die. This book was on the New York Times best seller list for 95 weeks straight in 2003 when it was released. The novel was also turned into a movie in 2004, staring John Voight.

The book starts out with the main character Eddie (an old man) who has worked at Ruby Pier the amusement park for almost his whole life. He dies trying to stop one of the rides at the park from falling and killing the passengers inside, but once the passengers are safe, the carts of the ride fall and Eddie gets killed.

When he arrives at heaven, he notices that the sky changes rich, beautiful, colors and he feels his youth come back even though he is still inside his old worn looking body. He meets one person at a time in his or her own heaven and they explain to him certain events in his life, how it affected them, and why his life had purpose. When he is done in the first heaven, the sky begins to change beautiful colors again, and he arrives in his second person’s heaven. He feels his body growing older every time he reaches a new heaven as the people explain their relevance to his life. When he is done meeting all five of the people, he gets to choose his heaven, and then the book ends.

            The main character in the story is Eddie, but some of the other characters that played big roles in his life where is wife Marguerite, his father,  a little girl named Tala, Ruby, the Blue Man, and the Captain. Marguerite is Eddie’s first and only love in the story. He comes home one day and tells his brother that he met the girl he is going to marry. And one day, he does. His father played a big role in his life because his father was hard on him, and pushed him to follow in his exact footsteps, working at Ruby Pier. This is something that Eddie regrets and resents his whole life, as it is the life he wishes he had escaped. The little girl named Tala, Ruby, the Blue Man, the Captain, and his wife Marguerite are the five people that Eddie meets in heaven, all of which somehow played an important role in his life, weather he knew it, or met them, or not.

            This story has many conflicts, because it focuses on Eddie’s life as a whole, and throughout his life there are many things that weren’t right like his relationship with his abusive father, and the way that when he came home from the war he was a broken man.

My favorite character in this book was the Blue Man, because I leaned about the way silver nitrate was used as medicine long, long ago and how this man drank so much silver nitrate to help ease his tension and his jumpy behavior that he turned blue. After he turned blue, he had to change his name to “The Blue Man” and his father never spoke to him again because he saw him as an embarrassment, so he went and joined Ruby Pier’s freak show. He is my favorite character because I think his story was the most interesting one, and he seemed very relaxed, and okay with himself the way he was.

            The most important thing to take away from this book is the fact that life isn’t something that we can label or define, we can’t fully understand everything that’s happened in our lives until they are over, and we really don’t know what comes next, if anything. An important theme in this book is that we don’t know what happens when we die, and the form of life after death in this book makes you really think about the fact that when you die, anything is possible. Regardless of what you believe in.

I could relate to Marguerite (Eddie’s wife) in the story because she was the type of woman who was always happy with what she had. She loved children, and when problems like being infertile came up, she thought of alternate options without feeling upset or depressed for very long. I am similar in the sense that I try and make the best out of every situation as well.

            Eddie always felt like he could never live up to his father’s expectations. Nothing he ever did was enough for his dad. When I was younger, I remember wanting so much to live up to the rest of the world’s expectations. I think back to it now, and I’m glad that the only expectations that I live up to now are the ones I want to live up to, and my own. I don’t think it’s good to live doing what someone else wants you to do your whole life. Living up to a stereotype or doing things that influence your life to please someone else isn’t smart, and it won’t make you happy although completely understand what that feels like.

My opinion on this book is that it is really keeps you interested. I liked it a lot because it was a different style of writing than the kind I am used to, and because it had a lot of valuable lessons worded perfectly. One of the strongest things about this book is that it was very well composed, and Mitch Albom is great at setting scenery in your mind. Another thing that I think Mitch Albom did very well is that he created connections to everything in the story, and in the heaven he created he decided that everything important in your life would get explained. This book was very well written, and I honestly don’t think that there were any weaknesses. If I could change anything in the book I’d change the ending to find out what Eddie’s heaven looks like, but at the same time I think that might be hard to do since it was a great book.

I would very much recommend this book to people because it really gets you wondering about how things work. We don’t know how many things are going to happen and when they’re going to happen, so it’s nice to have that subtle reminded to keep our minds open to the many possibilities.