Greta is Great spelled wrong.

Book Review (didn’t know how to post to ning)

The 5 people you meet in heaven, by Mitch Albom

5 hardest words on a page: porous, cowardice, tourniquet, emerged, surrendered

Pages in book: 196

Review:

I think this books main idea was that everyone and everything is connected. You don’t understand it as much in the beginning but in the end it becomes extremely clear that everything in the book leads up to that idea.  It illustrates that somehow you are connected to even the people you don’t meet.  An example in the book is:  When Eddie was in the war he thought he saw a shadow in a fire, like a child, he went in.  Because of this his liutenant shot him in the knee so he wouldn’t be killed.  He did not get to the shadow so the little girl Tala died.  She waited for him in heaven to be his 5th person.  That is just one idea the book brings about how closely knit we are.

 This book didn’t really delve into too much about any of the characters besides Eddie so I will try to make as much sense of the other important ones as I can because I can’t really go into much more detail about Eddie as the author did.  Marguerite, Eddie’s wife.  She lived her life loving her husband.  She didn’t have too much of a career and molded her life around being with Eddie.  They met at around 16 and like most old marriages were kind of forced together in a way.  Up until the end she never really had a life other than around her husband.

The old woman at the diner (Emile’s wife), Ruby.  She was another example of the typical wife in those times before the fiminism movement.  She supported and loved her husband until the day he died and left an amusement park with her name on it.  (Another example of them all being connected).  She was a waitress at a diner most of her life.  She was the person who explained to Eddie his father’s life and death.  She was portrayed as a very calm and patient person.

Something that amazing in this book is how calm and mellow everyone in heaven is shown as.  Being not very religous anyways this book opened doors to my mind and left me with the most annoyingly nagging question. What does happen after we die?  This question has haunted me since I finished the book and frankly I’m tired of it!  But it also made me realize how much fun it would be to write something like this.  To totally make up what you think will happen after we die and beleive in it with all your heart.  This book also makes me think that people who read it also have this nagging question and are forced to create their own beleif of what happens after we die or believe in the idea of the book itself.  Granted I’m not saying it makes you plan out your death but it does make you think.