[Spoiler Alert, because it is literally impossible for me to talk about this book the way I want to without divulging EVERYTHING that happens in it, and because I don't know how to write without telling everything anyway.]
Grade: A
Before I actually start this book review, I just wanted to state that I am officially upset at Kyle and how, despite the fact that I rarely ever see him anymore, I still am victim to his many Kyle-isms on a daily basis. For example, while typing in the title of this book in the title subject line, I almost wanted to write The Five People You MEAT in Heaven. Which, of course, would be a completely different book altogether. Probably still as interesting, but... different.
I. Loved. This. Book. I devoured it on the treadmill at Premiere Lady Fitness. It was just short of 200 pages (200 little midget pages with fairly large font) and it was some of the best 200 pages I've ever read.
The book begins at the end. I wish I had the book on hand right now to quote from it, but maybe it's better this way so I can accurately describe exactly what it was that I got from reading it. Anyway, as I was saying, the beginning is the end, or is it that the end is only the beginning? Point is, the end never really is the end, and that was great for this book, because it would be over in the first 15 pages or so if that were the case.
You meat (dammit Kyle!) meet Eddie. Do we ever learn his last name? I don't think so. [No, but everyone called him "Eddie Maintenance" cause that's what it said on his shirt! I remember now!] We know that he works at Ruby Pier, an amusement park on a pier (not quite Astroworld, more... Kemah boardwalk), and that he's 83 (it was his birthday). He's not a grumpy old man, but he's not a jolly one either. He, or so he thinks, goes through life, day by day, greasing tracks, tightening bolts and, every now and then, making a kid happy by making little animal shapes with pipe cleaners. Nothing spectacular. Nothing important. Nothing done by a nobody.
He meets 5 people: The Blue Man, Captain, Ruby (of the Pier), Margeurite & Tala. Each teaching him a very different lesson. Each in a different stage (of that particular person he's meeting) of Heaven. I love Albom's portrayal of Heaven. Much like Sebold's depiction of the "in-between" in The Lovely Bones, you don't meet God. He does mention God, the existence of him at least, but he didn't make God a character. I really liked that. To me, Albom let the five people be a vessel for God. Each person was there to teach Eddie the lessons he needed to learn, the lessons that, presumably God deemed important.
The Blue Man, someone who's death Eddie had inadvertently brought on, taught the lesson that every life is connected to another. With Eddie's life, came the death of the Blue Man. This is how the world works. It's just a fact of life.
The Captain was Eddie's captain back when he served in the army. After months in captivity by Japanese soldiers during World War II in the Philippines, Eddie helps he and his fellow soldiers to escape by distracting their four captors with juggling--yes, juggling. Eventually, they overpower their captors and in revenge for all the things they were forced to endure while under their power, the soldiers set fire to the entire village. Eddie swears he sees a shadow in the hut that he just set fire to and, ignoring the pleas of his fellow soldiers to get into the transport vehicle, he attempts to run into the hut to save whoever was stuck in the hut. What happened next was one of those life-altering events that, in the eyes of Eddie, ruined his life forever. A bullet hit his leg. A bullet that would render his leg useless. A bullet that he blamed as the cause of his "nothing" life. A bullet that was shot from his own Captain's gun. The Captain tried to explain that he was trying to save Eddie's life by taking him out via crippling his leg. Fighting ensues, the Captain doesn't fight back, he lets Eddie get out his anger. The Captain explains that in life, you must make sacrifices. Ultimately, the Captain made a sacrifice in the end that gave Eddie the gift of life--lame leg or not.
Ruby. As in Ruby-Pier-Ruby. Long story, but basically, she teaches Eddie the lesson of forgiveness. Eddie, who had a complicated relationship with his father (even more complicated than usual), had to learn to forgive his father. He learns things he didn't know and, though it's difficult, he learns to let go of his anger and his hate--which is only something that tears people apart.
Then there was Margeurite. Beautiful, pretty, young, Margeurite, aka Eddie's wife. The one and only love of his life. She sounds like a wonderful wife, I hope to be one like her one day. They faked me out and made me think she died when she, in fact, had not yet, but it was still devastating anyway. Point is, she teaches Eddie about love. That love transcends space and time (cliche, I know), but that it's more than just loving someone in the basic way we know it. When she passed away, she still felt Eddie's love--it just molded into a different form. Love is forever. (The emphasis on the word "is" is to be said a la Hugh Grant's character in Love Actually when he said, "... love actually is all around.")
There there is Tala. The entire book I was expecting to see "Annie or Amy", the girl that Eddie "saves" that causes his death. Throughout the book, he doesn't know if he was successful or not. He assumes not. I expected for him to meet her, as an old woman in his 5th step of Heaven--to show that he did save her, and that because of him, she was able to grow old. In a way, Mitch Albom did do something similar, but in a bigger, more unexpected way, I suppose. By this point, I had written of Eddie's vision of a shadow in the hut as just an hallucination, just as the Captain and Eddie's fellow soldiers guessed. Instead, he did see the shadow of a small child, a little girl named Tala who was told by her mother to hide from the soldiers in the hut. After Eddie tearfully pleads to the little girl to forgive him (I think?), Tala gives Eddie his final lesson. She lets Eddie know the reason why he was put on this earth to begin with. She first tells Eddie that he did, in fact, push Annie/Amy to safety from the falling roller coaster that caused his own death. He was confused because he distinctly remembered feeling little hands grasping him. Tala explains puts her own hands in his and he realizes that it was Tala, pulling him safely to Heaven.
Eddie eventually is taken back to a vision of the pier with thousands upon thousands of people, new and old and some non-existent (not born) and is told that because of his life's work of maintaining the pier, all of those people were kept safe... and that was his purpose in life. As little as it seemed to him, he held a much bigger purpose.
Now, after reading this novel, I go back to my post a week ago about Miep Gies and wonder again, am I doing enough? I don't want to have to wait until I'm done on this earth to find out what my purpose was. But maybe that's another lesson I need to learn. I just need to have faith in what I'm doing and hope that it is enough... maybe I'm not (and maybe no one is) meant to know what the meaning and purpose of life is while our time on earth is still ticking away. All I can do is try to live a good and happy life. I'll love my neighbor. I'll sacrifice what I can when I can--it's not all about me. I'll try not to let anger and negative emotions control me. I will let love (cheese alert!) lead the way.
