Book #20


The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom


Eddie is a fairground operator, who checks the safety of the various rides. He is 'an old man with a barrel chest and a torso as squat as a soup can', and dies while trying to save a young girl from a falling cart. Eddie goes to heaven - a most unexpected place - and meets five people who were instrumental in some way in his life. He learns not only about his life but also about what his time on earth meant.


This is my favourite book. I have recommended it, loaned it, bought it for and forced it upon too many people to count. I have read it more times than I can possibly count. It remains the only book I have ever come across where I have been tempted to read it again from the beginning the second I've finished it. It stirs both new emotions and identical emotions to the last time, every time. I am so incredibly in love with every word, it is unreal.

This is such a captivating and inspiring novel. The title gives the book a kind of religious premise, but religion barely even features. The book is more spiritual than religious, and yet so much more than just that. It handles life, death, fate, and how every tiny action can affect your course, and the courses of others, like a ripple effect.

Eddie is a beautiful character, one that you are instantly drawn to. The extent of his loneliness on earth makes you want to befriend him and be there for him. He thinks his life means absolutely nothing, and his five people are put there to show him otherwise.

The five people Eddie meets in heaven each have an important lesson to teach him about his own life, and about life in general. These lessons are so incredibly profound and poetic. Each one can be identified with and redefined to show relevance to your own life.

My only problem with this book was the length. I wanted it to last forever. I want heaven to be like this.

I believe this is a must-read for everyone, whether they are religious or not. It makes you think deeply about mortality, love, family, and the way you treat people.

I'm now left with the same thought as I'm always left with at the end of this novel: Who will be my five people?


20 / 66 books. 30% done!