This short book packs a punch, I don’t think I’ve
cried so much reading a book for quite a while.
I think my husband Ben was sure something was wrong with me as I
finished it up and had to keep running to the bathroom for a tissue!
Eddie is an elderly maintenance worker at a beachside
amusement park. On his 83rd
birthday, a tragic accident happens at the park and Eddie dies trying to save a
child. Did he save her? Eddie questions everyone he sees in heaven
to determine the child’s fate and he also meets five people who had a hand in his
earthly path and explain his existence.
As Eddie talks to each of the people, he learns more
about his life and about how it was tied together with so many other people’s
stories. He gets closure on what
happened to him during World War II and about his difficult relationship with
his father. It also explores the great
love he had for his late wife, Marguerite.
This book reminded me so much of one of my all-time
favorite movies – It’s a Wonderful Life.
Eddie feels like he is a failure, but he learns when he enters heaven
that his life has impacted more than he ever realized. I really liked the overall message as it’s
something I’ve always thought – even what you consider a small action could be
a large action to someone else!
This book was the May selection for the Flicks Book
and Movie Club, aka Rogue. Although it
deals with the afterlife, it strangely doesn’t really talk much about Christianity. We had some interesting discussion on the
book, but sadly half hadn’t read it yet so the discussion was curtailed.
Favorite Quotes:
“This is the story about a man named Eddie and it
begins at the end, with Eddie dying it the sun.
It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.”
“No story sits by itself.”
“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.”
“Things that happen before you are born still affect
you.”
“And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a
linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band
Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other
affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all
one.”
Overall, The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a good
book that makes you think about your own life and how you have impacted
people. Eddie didn’t have the perfect
life, but his life was important and tied into so many other lives.
Book Source:
The Kewaunee Public Library
This book was recommended to me and it took me 3 years to buy it, always in the back of my mind of something to do but never done. Then when I finally got it, I consumed it in one morning. I’m not usually a big reader honestly this is the 3rd or so book I’ve read cover to cover since I was in school but I simply could not put this book down! It is such a powerful book it moved me to tears many times reading it. I can’t recommend it enough!
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