The Five People You Meet In Heaven

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Summary: Sensational! :-)
Review: The Five People You Meet In Heaven is so engaging you will learn an abundance in life mottos to live by. I understood Eddie's life and why things happened the way they did. This book struck me and actually gave me hope in life's regard and I think it will leave you with a revised persepective on life as well. This is the type of book that everyone should read and will certainly enjoy! It's a fast read!

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Summary: Strong On Perspective
Review: The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom will touch the introspective side in your soul. Mitch Albom writes of Eddie, a maintenace man who feels that he has lived an ordinary life. When an accident takes his life one day, he is visited by five people whom he was connected. Whereas Eddie did not see their profound effect from his point of view, each of these souls certainly were shaped by Eddie.

The story of the Blue Man really opened up how one action can cause a chain reaction of emotions. The tale of Eddie's father shows how toughness on the outside can hide the gentle kind soul on the inside. Also greater insight is given to the war is hell statement in two of the other lessons. And we can not forget about the feelings of true love and how it effects us when someone is here and later gone.

One can certainly gain good perspective on life's lessons by reading The Five People You Meet In Heaven.

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Summary: An Insightful novel
Review: The Five People You Meet In Heaven will not only engage you but it will teach you countless life lessons. As you read you'll come to understand Eddies life and why things happen the way they do. This book will give you hope, reason, and I guarantee it will leave you a different person.
This is the type of book that everyone would enjoy and it's a very quick and easy read!

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Summary: The simpler, the more profound
Review: I normally don't write reviews, but I simply cannot get over this book. For someone who takes forever to finish a book due to what I used to think were "time constraints," I discovered that if there were really something meaningful enough to hold my attention, I would put everything else aside, and indeed I did. It must have taken me a couple of hours to read the whole thing (granted, it's not that long, but what an impact!). Eddie's story goes beyond a religious view of the afterlife.

Although it asks, "What if...?" it implies a certain kind of concrete reality about the hereafter that we can all incorporate into our lives, regardless of our beliefs (or lack thereof). It extends that here-and-now aspect of our present lives into eternity, makes it tangible, and has the potential to help bring the mundane into long-term perspective. I have learned to look at the miniscule parts of my life and at the very least, speculate their impact on the universe as a whole. It makes you not only aware of your past, present, and future, but the lives you touch and those that touch yours each and every day.

I loved Mitch Albom's simple, direct, narrative style. It is a metaphor for the way we can view life -- the simpler it appears, the more profound and far-reaching it actually is. This book is more than just an easy read -- it's ingenious!! Highly recommended and on my list of Top Five all-time favorites.

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Summary: New York Times Best Seller Presents Idea of the Afterlife
Review: The Five People You Meet in Heaven, the enchanting new offering by Mitch Albom, is a story that will lift your spirits and open your mind to a hopeful suggestion of the afterlife.
This New York Times best seller is about a man named Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Pier Amusement Park, who is killed on his eighty-third birthday while trying to save a little girl's life.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves three views of Eddie together, each showing a different perspective of his life. The present situation takes the reader through Eddie's death, funeral, and afterwards, third-narrative flashbacks reveal Eddie's past, and heaven is the bulk of the story, where Eddie meets five people with information crucial to his life.
The story opens with counting down Eddie's final minutes, as he goes about his daily work routine. "Thirty-four minutes to live. Eddie lifted the lap bar, gave each boy a sucking candy, retrieved his cane, then limped to the maintenance shop to cool down from the summer heat. Had he known his death was imminent, he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he did what we all do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in the world were still to come." From start to finish, the book remains interesting and is written with great simplicity.
After he dies, Eddie starts his new beginning in heaven where he instantly feels like a child again and is able to run for the first time since before WWII.
He discovers that heaven is not a place of beauty and serenity; it is a time for grasping the essence of his 83 years.
Meanwhile, Ruby Pier, where Eddie had worked for over fifty years, closes for three days and his co-workers are forced to deal with his absence while parents are compelled to tell their children why the kind "Eddie Maintenance," as they liked to call him, will not be fixing rides or making them balloons during his breaks any longer. Eddie never truly knew how much he was loved and would be missed.
The five people Eddie meets had all once been in his life, even if only for a moment, and each have a lesson to teach him.
One after another, they guide Eddie through his life and show him unsuspected connections and reasons to never before answered questions.
By the end of the story when Eddie has met his five people, he has learned that his life had been filled with purpose, even though at times he had considered himself to be a waste for never finding a more honorable field of work and he also finds out if his last act of saving the little girl ended in triumph or catastrophe.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven tells Eddie's story in an imaginative way that forces you to think about your own life. The story suggests that heaven is not a destination; it is merely a place where five certain people who impacted your life help you in understanding your past on earth and your new beginning in heaven.
For both those who believe in the afterlife and those who do not, The Five People You Meet in Heaven gives you an inspirational glance at an innovative possibility for life after death, and will leave you pondering over who your five people would be.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent: Here's Why
Review: Mitch Albom wrote his first book about the last conversations of a real man dying. This book is fiction; something he dreamed up about a man who dies, goes to Heaven, and has introductions to five people who were in his life. The first, the middle and the last he had never met. And then there are his wife and the captain of his army squad.

Everyone thinks they choose the people that are in their lives; school friends, camp friends, team friends, spouse/partner, children, coworkers. But how much do you really control about who plays major roles in your life? Not one bit. Do you control who the kids are in your neighborhood while you grow up? or, the man who picks up your trash? What happened when a bottle you trashed out the car window hit the ground? Or did it go backwards and hit a car behind you? Every action has a reaction...of some sort.

I don't want to give away what happens, the book is short as it is. You learn that Heaven is personal; a fairgrounds for some, a diner for others. In this book, each person Eddie the dead meets tells him what happened to them because of Eddie (or, to someone who affected Eddie's life, like his father). It is all an effort to help Eddie understand why his life was as it was. Why was his father so abusive? Why would he be dreaming of children? What ever happened to his captain, and what is the story behind his bum leg? The horrors of war, the job he hates....

This is a glorious but sad story. Eddie understands everything, but isn't off the hook for things that happened (albeit he is in Heaven). No idea what his future will hold, except he sees his wife in the end. This isn't anything more than a reminder (and it needn't be long after all) that we are all here together. In The Lord's Prayer, the words say "us," "we"...not I and Me. Along with this wonderful book, I'd also like to recommend another oddity that moved me, a terrific Amazon quick-pick -------------------------------------------> The Losers Club by Richard Perez

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Summary: The five people you meet in heaven
Review: The Five People You Meet In Heaven is a great book. It is by far the best book that I've read. Reading this book inspired me to read more books by Mitch Albom. In The Five People You Meet In Heaven you really start to connect with Eddie and see where he is coming from. Eddie is a confused repairman at a local amusement park who believes that his existence doesnt have an impact on anyone and he doesn't quite understand the meaning of his life. While trying to save a little girl from a falling ride he dies. When he reaches heaven it is nothing like he envisioned it to be. He then meets the first person he meets in heaven and the person tells him a story that happened in Eddie's life and explains to Eddie why things happened the way that they did, and this happens for the next 4 people. I won't ruin the ending but i recommend that everyone read this book, it will touch them in some way.

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Summary: Moving, inspiring, and destined to be a classic!
Review: It's hard to avoid the cliche "I couldn't put this book down" when discussing this book, because it is the absolute truth.

This is the story of Eddie, a seemingly insignificant man who feels trapped in a meaningless life. But Mitch Albom's message is that no one is truly insignificant or meaningless, because every action we take or do not take affects those around us, like ripples in a pool.

On his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in an accident while trying to save a little girl from a falling cart at a broken amusement park ride. Eddie then enters the afterlife, where he meets five people who explain to him the impact he had on their lives, and in so doing they help him understand the meaning of his own life.

I found the brilliance of this concise book to be in the contrast between the simplicity of the parable and the profound impact of the author's message. Through Eddie, we learn that our own lives are part of the great web of all existence, and therefore deeply meaningful and important. So although the book is on the one hand about death, I found it quite uplifting because no matter how small or insignificant we may occasionally feel, there are important unseen connections that we make with others every day.

This book left me emotionally stunned, quite frankly, as my little part in the bigger picture was suddenly made clearer to me. Perhaps, just perhaps, a clearer understanding of the role we play in the lives of those around us can inspire us to treat each person, and each moment, as special.

I highly recommend this book. It is both entertaining and thought-provoking. I whizzed through it the first time; forgoing sleep, food, and life in general until I finished. I am looking forward to reading it again.

Rating:
Summary: Huh.
Review: Huh. Interesting but... not all there. I must say I was intriuged by this book's plot. It could have gone a long way, but Albom did not take it to its full potential. Its rather tired morals and clichéd dialogue put a weight on the otherwise airy pace, scenes of near-rape and death bed repentance seem out of place in the book's almost whimsical narration. Airplane reading.

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Summary: worthwhile to read but not a must-read
Review: this book does give you a brand new idea about what life is about and how lives interact! After reading it, I drove on the street, stopped in front of a red light and started wondering "what connections have I got with these people walking in front of me?" --I know it sounds quite silly, but the book does have that power to make you wonder... Five lessons taught in the book are cliches, but they were explained in a creative way.

Now, something i don't like about the book... I hate how Eddie's tone's always stupid in heaven. I know he doesn't know what's going on, but he doesn't have to act stupidly...it's stupid to a point where his words of "confusion" and "innocence" sound really annoying every time he meets a new person. And I'd been waiting to see what special meaning his most hated job had on him, but when I found out at the end, I couldn't stop shouting out "OF COURSE that's the meaning!! but is that it??"

Overall, this book is very plainly written (it can be both good or bad depending on your preference), and the content is interesting and inspiring--a page turner indeed as some have said already. Worthwhile to read, but not a must read.