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Book Reviewed by:From the book jacket: From the author of the phenomenal #1 New York Times bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie, a novel that explores the unexpected connections of our lives, and the idea that heaven is more than a place; it's an answer.
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?"
Comment:
"Sincere. . . . A book with the genuine power to stir and comfort its readers." - Janet Maslin, New York Times.
"...this wonderful title should grace national fiction bestseller lists for a long time." - Publishers Weekly.
The Five People... is at BookBrowse because it more than met the criteria of having received exceptionally good reviews (even from tough critics such as Janet Maslin in the New York Times), and certainly visitors appreciate it (the reader reviews are glowing). However, at the risk of being exposed as the cynic I am, I found it fairly hard going. I think I would have been happier if it had been titled 'The Two People You Meet in Heaven', or perhaps at a stretch, 'The Three People', because by the time Eddie met his 4th person I was beginning to feel that the point was being labored just a bit.
This review
first ran in the March 2, 2006
issue of BookBrowse Recommends.
If you liked The Five People You Meet In Heaven, try these:
by Jon Mooallem
Published 2022
From the discovery of the author's face in a century-old photograph to a triple-amputee hospice director working at the border of life and death, here are thirteen hopeful, heartbreaking, and profound essays from "one of the most intelligent, compassionate, and curious authors working today" (Elizabeth Gilbert).
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
by Jonas Jonasson
Published 2012
A reluctant centenarian much like Forrest Gump (if Gump were an explosives expert with a fondness for vodka) decides it’s not too late to start over...
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To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child
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