Book Review: “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” by Mitch Albom

Whether you believe in the afterlife or not, this book is for you. By the end of the first chapter, the entire way I viewed the trajectory of my life changed.  

While grim, the book begins with a man named Eddie and his tragic death at an amusement park. When he dies, he is placed in a ‘Heaven’ that he does not understand. Each section of the book takes us into a chapter of his life he has not seen yet while going with his post-death ‘tour guide.’ We meet five specific characters whose lives have been altered by Eddie, without his knowledge, through a domino effect.   

In this deeply sentimental and reflective short story, readers can reflect on their own actions and ponder how they might affect people they may never meet.  

As I get older, I start to notice the complexity of my relationships. Friendship is more than a Friday night sleepover and coworkers are more than background characters. I have always been taught to think about other people, but this book puts this into a new consequential perspective.  

While we may consider ourselves the center of our lives, events are more nuanced than either “about us” or “not about us.” While both being negative and positive, without intention, we touch the lives of hundreds of people.  

This book gave me hope. In a world where we can feel small and non-consequential, this book showed me the communal nature of humanity. As Eddie goes from childhood to a war setting, marriage, the workplace, old age, and eventual death, we see even though these are all different settings, there is the basic need for human relationships. That is the common theme behind all these ideas.  

A specific point I found interesting was the ending which revealed the way Eddie perceived his Heaven. Without spoilers, the premise is that everyone, while all together in ‘Heaven,’ viewed their rejoining in a different setting.  

“My mother still has a picture I drew from age seven hanging off the godly ‘water park’ I imagined Heaven to be, complete with a movie theater, a private resort, and a communal Ferris wheel.”  Death and the afterlife have always been so mysterious and fascinating to me, which is why I picked this book up. This book shares the idea I have, that the afterlife may be extremely personal and experienced differently by each individual.  

If you have ever been curious about the afterlife or your connection with peers on Earth, I would highly recommend this short novel. It comes in short, easy-to-understand pieces while leaving room for me to put the book down and write down a deep quote or realization I thought up.  

• Afterlife
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