Remember how I said I had bought two books on my Kindle for said vacation and that one of them was Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler and the other was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams?
Yeah, well I actually bought a third and read that one instead of Hitchhiker. As I was mindlessly browsing through YouTube videos (a favorite pastime of mine) I found a video talking about a book called The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Alborn.
Just to clarify, I don't exactly know why I got this book. I wanted another book to read and I wasn't really in the mood for Hitchhiker. I read the blurb for this one and I liked it, so I got the free preview of the book that you can get on Amazon. Basically they give you just enough of a book to decide if you like it or not, and then before a major plot point happens they ask you if you want to buy it. Well obviously now I do! I want to know what happens!
So anyway, I read about the first chapter and a half of this book, was intrigued, bought it, and then didn't put it down. I was hooked. However, whenever I explain this book to others I feel as if it loses its magic. That doesn't usually happen with other books, I can babble on about them for hours, but this one I don't talk about very much. Except to you, because I like you.
Basically, this is the story of a man named Eddie.
Eddie dies.
That isn't a spoiler, that is the story.
Eddie is a maintenance man at Ruby Pier. He has lived there since he was a little boy and his father was head of maintenance before him. Although a war and a marriage has happened between little boy Eddie and old man Eddie, there he is, fixing and maintaining the machinery and making sure that everything still works. But Eddie is lonely. And Eddie hurts all over. And Eddie is old. And one day, the unthinkable happens and Eddie is no longer there to be lonely and hurt and old. Because Eddie has died. From his death onwards, he goes on a journey, beginning once again as a boy, at the pier the way he remembers it was in the 1930s. As Eddie journeys once again through his life, he meets five people. Five people that he impacted somehow in his life, even if he wasn't aware of it and even if the impact wasn't a good one. Someway or another, he changed their lives. And they are there to tell him exactly how he did it. Once he has met all of them, he can go and wait for the person who changed his life to tell them their story. Only after can he move on.
This book was very touching. It was a bit of an unexpected pearl. I am not a very religious person, which once again brings up the question of why I bought this book. However, I do really like imagining what happens after death. Now you could see that as morbid, or you could view it as Dumbledore does, as the "next great adventure". I don't know why, but I think it's very interesting. Anyway, this book was not very religious. Sure, Eddie goes to Heaven and he does pray and he does mention God a few times, but even if that isn't your cup of tea, it really isn't the core of the story. The core of the book is Eddie, and his five people.
Another thing I liked about this book was how true I felt it was. I'm not talking about life after death, or Heaven, I am talking about the everyday occurrences that shape a life. I'm talking about accidents and the inevitability of everything and dealing with it in a normal human way, which I find most book characters do not. I won't spoil anything, but this is a sad book. It is a .... I think melancholy is the word here. It is a melancholic book. There are some happy parts and there are some sad parts and the whole of the two is beautiful.
I highly recommend this book to basically anyone, although, I'm going to put an age marker of eh, say 13, because there are some very sad, very real topics in there, but nothing obscene. The age limit I've placed is on emotional maturity, not because of language (although there is some, but not a lot) or racy scenes/subjects. As I said, there are many thought provoking themes and events, so it's not a light-hearted beach read, but it's also very easy to read as it is quite well written. It's a quick read, I finished it in under 24 hours because I couldn't put it down.
I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did! Leave your thoughts in the comments below and meanwhile I will get to work on finished A Cuckoo's Calling, which I still have not finished. Shame on me, I know.
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