One of the great things about checking out audiobooks from the public library is that I can take a chance on something I normally wouldn't buy, and I end up loving it. And then, of course, there are the times I take a chance on something I wouldn't normally like and end up really hating it as predicted. See if you can guess which is the case here by the end of this post.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is about Eddie, an amusement park maintenance guy who dies and goes to heaven. Spoiler alert, I guess, though you could probably figure that out from the title. From there he meets five people whose lives touched his and learns why he was such a unique and special little snowflake while on Earth. The book's main shortcoming is that I only get to enjoy seeing something kill Eddie on one occasion. And that was over within the first few pages.

Seriously, this thing is so ham-fisted in its moralizing, so infused with cliches, so sentimental, and so naked in its attempts to manipulate emotions that I only finished it because it was blessedly short. The worst part about this last point is that the audiobook brings up violins --VIOLINS!-- in the background at the most supposedly sentimental parts. Which is to say, constantly.

Oh, and Albom apparently never heard of the "show, don't tell" rule when it comes to establishing character and showing reactions. I guess everyone in Heaven describes their mental processes in flagrant detail. There's also the issue of proclamations that sound wise at first, but crumble under any amount of thought. For example, there's a line to the effect of "Sometimes, when you sacrifice something you don't lose it. You just give it to someone else." Now, I haven't a dictionary in front of me to help me through this moral morass, but I fail to see the difference off the top of my head.

At any rate, I certainly wouldn't recommend this. If you really want to read a good book about the afterlife, pick up Dante's The Divine Comedy, read the first few pages, then throw it down in frustration and decide that there's no good middle ground.

I didn’t read this book when everyone was in love with it, cheering it, championing its readability, its imagination, its magical splendor. Nor did I read it when the inevitable backlash kicked in, when it was accused of being trite, overly sentimental manipulative dreck, one of the worst books to be foisted upon Western literature. The fervor has since died down on both sides and at last this book found its way to me. Which side would I fall on?

Well I must be a sentimentalist, for I just absolutely loved it. I thought it resonated with profound emotion and insight into the human condition. Humans aren’t that complicated, but we sure do have a way of making things so. A life lived is filled to the brim of hurt feelings, misunderstandings, misplaced grudges … we carry the burden of guilt over things we had no control over to begin with. Always, we seem confused by life and our place in it, plagued by pernicious doubts about what we didn’t do, what we failed to try, to say, to give.

Mitch Albom’s version of heaven is a wondrous, engaging concept – without being preachy or overtly recognizable as any particular faith. I appreciated that. If we’re lucky, we all believe in something, and it will be that something that waits for us when our life on this particular plane is through. Who would my five people be, and what they would teach me?

Several passages that I loved:

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 (48).

Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down (57).

حالا دیگه میچ آلبوم شده یکی از نویسنده های محبوبم :)
داستان های میچ آلبوم همیشه تقریبا یه موضوع جدید و نویی دارن، و همیشه کتاب هاش پر از جمله های به یاد ماندنی و تاثیرگذاره. کتاب پنج نفر هم از این قضیه مستثنا نیست، اما به نظرم به خوبی کتاب های چاپ جدیدتر میچ نبود.
از وقتی کتاب رو تموم کردم دارم پیش خودم فکر میکنم ۵نفری که قراره من توی بهشت ملاقات کنم چه کسانی میتونن باشن؟ :دی

Mitch Albom comes across as that guy at a dinner party who tells you his 'secret-to-life'; as if his wisdom and reflection have unlocked life's mystical wonders. You listen, and nod politely, but this guy is a bore, one you're eager to escape from. He's proselytising his own 'religious' views as if he's found the holy grail.

I won't give a plot summary for readers here. I'd rather capture the nature of Albom instead.

For me, Albom's work feels so patronising that it's funny. The whole scenario is ridiculously comical, yet Albom earnestly believes that he's imparting some kind of masterful wisdom. And he's not. It's adolescent philosophy at best, and even if I were in my 'Coming-of-age' years, I doubt I'd be convinced by it either.

Patronising, juvenile, overly didactic drivel. Life is about self-discovery. Albom spoils the fun of that self-discovery by trying so hard to impose his own discoveries on others. He's propagating a pathetic pseudo-philosophy here.

إيدي عاش حياة متعِبة
بتحكي الرواية عن إيدي شخص وحيد عنده 83 سنة قضي معظمهم كعامل صيانة في مدينة ملاهي.. حياة روتينية مملة.. مفيش أسرة و لا أولاد.. و لا شغل كويس يجيب فلوس كتير زى أخوه.. شخص عايش على الذكريات.. سواء كانت سعيدة مع رفيقة عمره العزيزة مارغريت.. أو بائسة زى ذكرياته في الحرب و مع أبوه...
الرواية بقي بتبدي من النهاية.. في محاولة إنقاذ بنت صغيرة إيدي بيموت و بيقابل خمس أشخاص أثروا في حياته حتي لو هو ميعرفهمش أصلا...
دايما بحب فكرة النص التاني من الصورة.. الأجزاء اللى مبنشوفهاش ابدا و لا عمرنا هنعرفها..دايما فيه روابط خفية احنا كبشر بقدرتنا المحدودة منقدرش نعرفها و لا نفهمها.. بنحس إننا اذكياء جدا و احنا بنحلل المواقف او بنخطط اللى عايزينه يحصل عشان فجأة يحصل العكس و اللى بيبين قد ايه احنا غلبانين و عمرنا ما هنعرف.. و ده جزء مننا..
و لولا الإيمان و إن الواحد راضي حتي لو مش فاهم فهو راضي عشان متأكد انه ربنا كاتب له الخير و انه بس كإنسان مش عارف الخير فين أو لازم يتحمل ايه عشانه مك��نش حد قدر يعيش..
الفكرة لطيفة جدا و ذكية و طريقة السرد كامت مناسبة تماما و مشوقة و حبيت جدا فكرة أعياد الميلاد و التنقل بين الماضي و الحاضر في الحكي...
في الآخر اما فكرت على نمط الرواية معرفتش أجمع أشخاصي الخمسة و لقيت إن لو فيه مشهد واحد بس احب انى أشوفه و أكرره دايما فهو إني أشوف العيلة و كل اللى بحبهم سوا و فرحانين و بياكلو و يهزروا مرة في البيت و مرة عالبحر و هكذا إلى ما لا نهاية ❤️
في الآخر الرواية جميلة فعلا و يُنصح بها بشدة

HEADLINE: FILTHY RICH WRITER CASHES IN ON GEEZERS’ CHRONIC PAIN?

Right, kids?

The world is cut-and-dried SIMPLE - or IS it???

Well, wait till you’re inching painfully towards the Big 8-0, like me.

WHAT! Yet another sentimental old-timer gives this piece of jellied sugar syrup FIVE STARS?

Y'er darned tootin', kids.

Take away the fancy Amazon gift wrap with its shiny veneer and the Good Housekeeping seal of approval (you’re right, from the folks in the seniors' homes of course), and you have… WHAT?

A story of a broken old man who's had an excruciatingly hard life.

And YES - in the Real World people's hard lives CAN break them.

COMPLETELY.

TOTALLY.

UTTERLY.

Their hard lives can:

Wipe the floor with them.

Grind them to dust.

Spit on their ashes!

Oh, but Lucky You - you’re somehow EXEMPT from Hard Fractious Reality?

Such is NOT the case with poor old Eddie, who's just died and finally, thankfully, disappeared from this sorry old world. (You will, too, you know. But, I forgot - you’re Teflon Coated…)

Until his spirit gets a golden chance to redeem itself and get his old, broken life back, MADE BRAND NEW this time - in Heaven.

He's made some BAD mistakes. But NOW he has a chance to be forgiven for them, through some SEARING INSIGHTS into his past.

AND.... to be reunited the love of his life!

So that's the real story. And if you only know it via Put Downs, READ IT anyway.

It’ll elevate your consciousness, and give it a glimpse of BREATHTAKING NEW VISTAS.

And it’ll make your HEART SING! (Have you forgotten when your heart could do that?)

YES - and it’s STILL worth a solid five stars.

فوق العاده بود!

This is just the most awful book I have ever read. I hate this book!

My favourite Mitch Albom book to date! The descriptions of the characters are incredibly detailed! I would read/share these with my students to help them be better descriptive writers. A book that makes you think!

Talks about a dead man,Eddie, who goes to heaven to learn what heaven is not about and what heaven should mean.
He will meet five important people in heaven (who may or may not be someone he knows personally during his lifetime) giving him a chance to look back and see how his life actually was as opposed to how he perceived his life when he was alive. *Some important themes that are dealt with:
Sacrifices that were unknowingly made; grudges, anger, hatred, regrets ruining lives; unseen blessings; single-mindedness ruining relationships; child neglect and domestic abuse; romance; war; relationships that make a person. *Misconceptions regarding this book:
It is a serious book dealing with war, deaths, broken relationships and complicated family relationships. Not just a mere philosophical book.
It is definitely a sad read, and not a self help book to deal with personal issues and how to come out of it.
But I guarantee you, you will not cry buckets but help you analyse your relationships and think about the important people in your life in a different way. *Why you should pick up this book:
It brings up issues that we usually don't consider important and think they don't make much impact on our lives when they actually do.
Complicated matters in relationships that are dealt with in the book with such depthness and understanding is really appreciable.

This is not a book meant for only adults.
I would like to recommend this book to everyone young and old.
I am sure this book is one of those life changing reads.

(One

As people, we all have our own idea what heaven is like, and I quite like the author's take on it. The book follows Eddie, who dies on his 83rd birthday while trying to save a young girls' life at the amusement park he works. His journey takes him through his life in the form of five people that had an impact in his life, through all major crossroads in his life that he did not even think was important at the time and why his life followed the route it did. In the end Eddie finds peace through this journey and finds out what the meaning of his life was and goes to his own part of heaven where he is always happy. A nice and quick read.

It's a wonderful book. The writing style makes you believe that the author has actually gone through the events he describes.