Login
Like the past two books that Albom has published (one fiction, one non-fiction memoirs), it deals with life and death. “Tuesdays With Morrie” centered on his old professor and how he looked at life with death quickly approaching. In “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” it centered around the theme of what the main character did with his life, and his penance while traveling to Heaven. In this book, he looks at what would we do if we had one more day with a loved one AFTER their death.
The story’s main character is Charley “Chick” Benetto. It follows his days as a child dealing with an over macho father and a stern yet loving mother. It looks at how he dealt with the very abrupt ending of his parents’ marriage. It looks at how even years after not seeing his father Chick still tried to please him. It looks at the self destruction of his life and eventual suicide attempt. It deals with the emotions that he was too scared to show, the times he realized that he needed to stand up for his mother and didn’t, and all the times that she stood up for him. Much like Albom’s previous books, this tugs at the heartstrings.
Albom’s style of writing is very simple. (He says that comes through necessity from being a newspaper columnist.) Much like the famed Dan Brown (author of “The DaVinci Code”), it is at a level that pre-teens can read. But unlike Brown’s stories that are filled with just the action of what is happening to the paper thin characters, being led around from event to event like Pavlov’s dog, Albom’s stories are filled with character building events, adding oodles of depth to them for such a short story. (They are classified as novels, but novellas are probably the more proper classification.) So even though a 5th grader can read it, a book reading veteran can get so much out of it, too.
All three of Albom’s recent publications can make you look at things differently. Even if just for the time you are reading the book. To me that is a sign of good writing. Even if it is over hyped a bit.
7/10
