Mitch Albom: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Reviewed by PENELOPE BIEDER


American author Mitch Albom's first book Tuesdays with Morrie was an international bestseller that sat on the New York Times' Top Books list for four years. It was so successful its publishers did not bother to produce a paperback edition. They were happily content with the hardback sales. It was an account of his weekly visits and conversations with an ageing, unwell friend.

Now the Detroit-based, nationally syndicated newspaper columnist and broadcaster - he is a radio host for ABC and regularly appears as a commentator on ESPN - has turned his hand to fiction for the first time with a heartfelt story about an 83-year-old war veteran called Eddie who still goes to work each day at an amusement park by the ocean, Ruby Pier.

There he maintains sideshow rides with names like Freddy's Free Fall and the Pipeline Plunge, which quickly become metaphors for the vicissitudes of life and death.

Indeed the story begins with Eddie's death: "It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time."

These first few words possibly hold the key to the success and the failure of this novel, but I didn't know it at the time.

When I put the attractive little hardback edition down (it is a short 208 pages) I reflected on a strange, emotionally intense parable about the meaning of an ordinary life that at times read like something from Readers' Digest yet had many patches of good writing.

An essentially American story of redemption, it is difficult to fathom who, or what age, its readers would be in this country. With great care it avoids any observations about religion and is at heart a charming but cloying morality tale about love and loss and pain.

Eddie has waged a life-long battle with his regrets, feeling he has accomplished nothing, trapped in the job his father also had.

The story of Eddie's journey through the afterlife and his five unexpected encounters is lumbered with an exquisite earnestness that fails to be lightened by any humour.

It is such a serious, sorrowful, needy story about memories and goodness and sacrifice, and making the most of the short time on Earth that we undoubtedly have, that I wondered if it had been written as a therapeutic remedy for a mid-life crisis (Albom is 45).

Perhaps the magical safety net of Albom's afterlife that is so richly portrayed is conjured up from a deep, longheld insecurity about our ultimate fate, that he recognises is universally felt.

Having said that, there are stunning, imaginative, roller coaster descriptions of heaven that are riveting, and the characters are well-realised, vivid and fascinating enough to keep the pages turning.

Spare and effective and often beautiful the writing may be, but the values that Albom feels the need to reiterate keep getting in the way of Eddie's story.

Little, Brown, $39.95