The Five People You Meet in Heaven By Mitch Albom

I apologize for not italicizing the title; it won't let me do it.

    The Five People Your Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom is a marvelous work of fiction. There is no reason why any person inhabiting earth should fail to read it. The language, the simplicity, the depth, the characters; everything about this book is outstanding. Read this book, and read it today. I have never been so absorbed in anything in my entire life.
     Albom uses basic language. There is little to rant about and nothing to complain about. Nobody should have any difficulty flying through the book. One of the reasons why I enjoyed the book so much was Albom's habit of being direct with the plot. There was never a moment in which I was questioning where I was and what was happening. This is polar to something like Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and it's a nice change to be honest. Albom's method of telling an impossible war story is enthralling. Eddie experiences an extended flashback to Vietnam, in which is the single most disgusting way to kill a man. If you do not wish to know, skip the next couple sentences. Eddie, who learned to juggle on the pier where he grew up, entertains his four guards by juggling four rocks. All of a sudden, he takes the stones and hurls them towards them, striking four of them dead, right in the face, and escaping with his platoon after he burns the camp. It was a "Oh my god, I can't believe what just happened" moment. This book is composed of them.
     The way Albom describes people is phenomenal. For example, Rabozzo, a member of Eddie's platoon which has been captured, contracts a disease in the mines. He describes it in great detail, and, although this is not a particularly violent book, he draws upon the gore of the sickness. Suddenly, the reader is swept off their feet when poor, sick, young, helpless Rabozzo executed with a bullet to the head. All this happens in two lines. It is so instant that it can't help but become real. I actually saw it happen, I swear. His skill in depicting each characters is unmatched by today's authors. You feel the love between Marguerite and Eddy. You feel the Captain's pain as he is forced to shoot his own platoon member in order to save their life. You feel Eddy's pain as he traverses his five planes of heaven to learn the meaning of his life. It feels so real. It is so real.
     Albom sure knows how to present his story to his readers, for it is incredibly well developed and thorough. When the end of the book is reached, the reader is sad. However, there is something more, a phenomenon called "fulfillment". This happens when a book is written so that all information needed to experience happiness for the characters is presented. It is when the author succeeds in creating a utopia of thought in the readers mind because the plot of the book is so perfect that the reader can't help but sit in awe at what just happened. I will never stop thinking about this book. The concept of a good man seeing his triumphs and beautiful, beautiful mistakes makes for an angelic story. Your average writer could never pull of such a grand feat. Albom is a master of his craft, his grace shining through the pages and into his reader's thought.
     Although, I admit, this was not the most challenging book to read, it was of comparable difficulty to Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer. The difference between the two is that The Five People You Meet in Heaven is quality. Its themes are vital, its delivery unique, and its tendency to leave you on the very tip of your seat  makes it one of the best books I've read, not just this year, but in my seventeen years of life.