ACCEPTANCE!!!

ACCEPTANCE! - Mitch Albom - the five people you meet in heaven

Well, I struggled with my choice of the final novel for this challenge. Originally, I thought, The Waterproof Bible might do the trick -- usually anything even remotely linked to the Bible sends me into a traumatized fetal position -- but then I read Corey's review and thought, well, maybe. Once I started reading it though, I couldn't stop and decided that it was too similar to the type of novel I thoroughly enjoy -- Come, Thou Tortoise -- being my latest favourite. (Sorry Steve Zipp, I still have to get my hands on a copy of Yellowknife.)

So I went to the library, began with the A's and came across Mitch Albom. Immediately, I recognized the five people you meet in heaven as something which was likely to send me screaming and howling and running furiously in the other direction: trite warm fuzzies a l'americaine.

First, I have to take issue with whoever wrote the inside flap of this book. "...an enchanting, beautifully written novel..." Beautifully written???? Give your head a shake! Pages 62-64 contain a seven paragraph mini-chapter on the protagonist's life in the army. In those seven paragraphs, Albom begins each and every one of their nineteen sentences with either "Eddie learned" or "He learned". BORING!!! While I might be able to concede that Albom wanted to emphasize the Army as a place of learning, I wish Albom had (and you will forgive me), learned how to use a THESAURUS.

The story, which I suspected would be brutally mind numbing, was instead, periodically charming. It begins at the Ruby Pier Amusement Park where Eddie is the maintenance man. He is unhappy and bored with life. This will not remain a problem for him as he dies on this his 83rd birthday while trying to save the life of a young girl who is in the path of a falling cart.

He awakens in "heaven" and meets five people. (Big surprise, eh?) The first is a Blue Man who says, "There are five people you will meet in heaven...Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth...Some[people] you knew, maybe some you didn't. But they all crossed your path before they died. And they altered it forever." p. 35 Micky learns that he inadvertently killed the Blue Man. He goes to Blue Man's funeral and wonders why people gather when others die. Blue Man replies, "'It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed... Strangers...are just the family you have yet to come to know.'" p. 48-49. This is Eddie's first lesson.

Eddie's former Captain is the second person he meets. In his company, Eddie returns to the Philippines and relives his capture, captivity, and escape. He discovers that it was his Captain who was responsible for the bullet that caused him a lifetime of pain. He also learns that the Captain was killed while they were rushing to get him medical aid. The lesson from the Captain is "'Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to.'" p.93 "Eddie thought for a moment. He thought about the bitterness after his wounding, his anger at all he had given up. Then he thought of what the Captain had given up and he felt ashamed. He offered his hand." p.94

Ruby, the inspiration for the construction of the Amusement Park meets Eddie next. In this section we meet Eddie's abusive father and walk through significant childhood moments. "All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped." p. 104 The reader learns about the impact Eddie's father has had on his son's life. Ruby tells Eddie, "Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves." p. 141

The first three lessons, in my opinion, although hardly original, have merit. Nonetheless, the love story of Eddie and Marguerite (his fourth heavenly encounter) has to be the most sickly saccharine sweet part of this book and the most revelatory of the Albom's woeful writing -- especially of similes. "Love, like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive." p. 164 and "The waters of their love fell again from above and soaked them as surely as the sea that gathered at their feet." p. 166 Gag! Gag!! Gag!!!!! AHHHHH! Marguerite dies at 47 of cancer and an angry Eddie is left to carry on. He feels that life has stolen love from him. She replies, "Lost love is still love, Eddie. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it." p.173. What a load of crap! Having lost a close friend to cancer, and having lost a mother to Alzheimer's, (neither way could ever be construed to be a romantic way to leave this earth. Dance? Did he really say that?) I have not found that my memory has heightened...nor would I wish to dance with it! What bullfeathers.

But finish the book, I must.....
The fifth and thankfully short section concerns a final encounter, this one with a little Asian girl. Turns out that he killed her. She was in a barn that he burned down on the night of his escape. From her, he learns that his work at the amusement park was a form of atonement for her death. "I was sad because I didn't do anything with my life. I was nothing. I accomplished nothing. I was lost. I felt like I wasn't supposed to be there." She replies, "You keep them safe. You make good for me...Is where you were supposed to be...Eddie Main-ten-ance." p. 191 "There was a pier filled with thousands of people...they wre there, or would be there, because of the simple, mundane things Eddie had done in his life, the accidents he had prevented, the rides he had kept safe, the unnoticed turns he had affected every day...and a peace came upon him that he had never known before." p. 193.

While I do agree with Albom's final words, "that each [person] affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one." p. 196, I will not be rushing to the store to purchase another of his novels.

Critical Monkey Rating? Half a monkey.