This was a truly enjoyable read in many different ways. The Five People You Meet In Heaven offers many theories about Heaven to ponder on. From what Heaven will look like to each individual person, to who one will be able to see again and talk with after death, I find Albom's take on the afterlife to be fascinating. I really liked its simplistic style, chock full of descriptive figurative language-laced sentences that I circled and underlined to be able to revisit and appreciate at a later time. I also loved this book's approaches to questions about life that every human mulls over at some point in their existence: What is my purpose? Have I done what I was supposed to do with my life? These questions and more are brilliantly answered in terms of one fictional individual, a unique character known as Eddie. An old man who has been through war, heartbreak, and hours of mundane work at his job as a pier maintenance worker, Eddie's life seems ordinary and of little to no significance. But what I love most about this book is its emphasis on the impacts that every person makes in the smallest of ways, or in other words, the ways that we make differences and impact people simply by living our own lives. Meeting five people in heaven that portray the impact that Eddie had on Earth before dying to save a little girl from a terrible ride accident expresses the profound notion that our lives do matter, in ways that we can't even begin to comprehend. And even though this is just one guy's (Albom's) take on the afterlife and human purpose, I find it to be insightful and delightful to read in the form of a book about embracing everything that happens in one's life for the sake of others.


All of the sentences that I circled and underlined for future enjoyment :)

"But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time."

"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."

"Strangers ... are just family you have yet to come to know."

"... over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down."

"War had crawled inside of Eddie, in his leg and in his soul."

"Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."

"The old darkness has taken a seat alongside him. He is used to it by now, making room for it the way you make room for a commuter on a crowded bus."

"But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman."

"Love, like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive."

"... the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."

 I watched the film adaptation of this novel before reading the novel itself. I knew from watching the film that this was a story worth revisiting, so I eventually decided to read it. While the film does an excellent job of sticking to the general plot of the novel, as I say with all book/movie pairs, the book was way better. Many rich details, including life in a Southern town, that can only be captured in text run wild in this novel. But what I love most are its subtleties. While it is a book surrounding both white and black characters, its author Kathryn Stockett does an excellent job of contrasting these two race's lifestyles and societal standings. In essence, these subtleties, or "lines" as some of the characters refer to them as, are striven to be broken through the writing of a book that reveals the oftentimes harsh lives of the help of white women in a town known as Jackson, Mississippi (a town that functions as if the Confederation won the Civil War). Overall, this novel is beautifully written and does an amazing job of developing characters and situations that put readers on edge and rooting for what can only be described as a happy ending. For what these characters are essentially fighting for by writing a manuscript that could expose them to the harsh exploits of a white supremacist society is change: change in how the country views a race that was supposed to be freed from oppression and given liberty many moons ago. Sadly, this story cannot and does not have a happy ending. How can it when today in the year 2020, the United States as a nation is still struggling to grapple with racial disparities? I highly recommend that you read this book; rather than saying "regardless of the lack of a happy ending," I instead want to say "because this story does not have a happy ending," you should read this book. While set in a fictional landscape with made-up characters, these landscapes and characters represent actions and environments that were very very real during the 1960s in Southern America. And everyone can grow from and enjoy the timeless theme of cultivating friendships despite obstacles and differences that this novel has to offer.


Some of my favorite quotes from The Help:

"All I'm saying is, kindness don't have no boundaries."

"Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else."

"No one tells us, girls who don't go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens."

"We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought."

"... I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe."