The Five People you Meet in Heaven (by Mitch Albom)

(Amazon UK link)

I'm not usually interested in books that become cult favourites. I read various reviews of this one on two popular consumer review sites. While some of them piqued my interest I decided I probably wouldn't bother with this one by Mitch Albom - someone I had never even heard of.

Then I saw 'The Five People you Meet in Heaven' for a few pence at a jumble sale and decided to get it. I started reading the book yesterday afternoon, and enjoyed it so much that I finished it this morning. Admittedly it's not very long, only a little over 200 pages. But once I had started, I could barely put it down.

The story is an intriguing one. Eddie, a park maintenance man in his 80s, dies while attempting to rescue a small girl from a nasty fairground accident. The book opens by mentioning that he's about to die, then gives a countdown of his last hour. So it's no shock when it happens. The focus of the book is what happens after he dies - where, as the title explains, he meets five specific people.

However these are not necessarily five people he would have expected to meet. Indeed, he barely knows one of them and had never met another one of them. Nevertheless, each person had some involvement in his life, and is there to teach him something he needs to learn before he can have a peaceful eternity.

It might sound trite, but I didn't find it that way at all. It could have been confusing as the book is a complex tapestry with snapshots of Eddie's life interspersed with his heavenly meetings. But I thought that it was very cleverly written, building up a vivid picture of this thoroughly likeable old man.

All in all, a highly recommended 'different' type of book.