Belief in an afterlife in itself is a hopeful act, and while I’m not religious and don’t really think there is anything after “this”, there are worse things to encounter on the other side than five people with important messages. That’s always what goodness boils down to – hope. The story is by its very nature quite tragic, but like all the best books, hope still shines through. It’s nice to see Eddie again, less grizzled than we first knew him. Annie is a sweet person, not perfect, but more courageous than she lets herself believe and the sort of woman I would like to be friends with. This book, and the previous, play that up to the max. I’ve always been a bit obsessed with the idea of sonder, that feeling that everyone you meet has their own story and a life as complex as your own, but you only get to play a part in a few of them. The original tale is one of my favourite books and while I’d not held out much hope, I think I’d always been curious to know what had happened to the little girl. There aren’t many books that bring a tear to my eye, but this one certainly did.

She now undertakes the same journey as Eddie once did, meeting five people who changed her life, including the doctor who reattached her hand after it was lost in the accident, her strong, protective mother, and Eddie himself. Annie feels herself go under the anaesthetic when she gets to hospital, but she wakes up in the afterlife, meeting the first of her five people. This is her story.Īnnie has just got married, but the marriage is doomed as within hours, she and her husband Paulo are in a devastating hot air balloon crash.

At the end of his novel, he takes his place in the queue to meet the girl he saved.

He ascends to the afterlife where he is met by five people who impacted his life and teach him a lesson he must learn from it. In the original book, we focus on Eddie, an elderly war veteran who dies saving the life of a little girl.

Mitch Albom has used this technique to the full in the beautiful sequel to the truly excellent The Five People You Meet In Heaven. The trouble is, of course, no story really is told in a vacuum. Sometimes we have to let stories standalone. Of course there are exceptions – Toy Story 2 and Shrek 2, for example – but it’s a good rule of thumb. More often than not they serve as a way for someone to cash in on a previously great story with a slightly worse story that wasn’t really needed. “This is a story about a woman named Annie, and it begins at the end, with Annie falling from the sky.”

The next person you meet in heaven