This book is sheer magic in content and style. The first chapter of the book is titled "The End" and the first sentence of the book is "This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It might have seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time"
And the author grips us right there. Right through the story and till the end. The impact doesn't end when the story ends. That talks volumes about the book.
"This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for." That's the gift that Eddie, a 86 year old war veteran and maintenance man gets which liberates him from his loneliness, guilts, regrets and resentments. He also learns to forgive.
Eddie and the five people who show him the meaning of his life continue to haunt us for a long time. A wonderful story of Eddie that almost unfolds backwards. Chapters about his birthdays act as touch points, connecting the present, the past and the future.
Eddie leads a seemingly wasted life and as we go along his life, we feel sorry for him. His ambitions and optimism get shattered when he is forced by circumstances to take up maintenance of the park, his father's job and becomes Eddie, Maintenance. The war leaves him partially crippled that ravages him physically. His resentment against his father and his interpretation of events leave him bitter.
When he dies and goes to heaven, he meets five important people of his life. He learns important lessons which could be lessons for anyone. What we think is a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park, gets a totally different meaning when we, along with Eddie rediscover the meaning from a different perspective. Life is actually good that can only be spoilt only by our interpretations. We discover that even a life full of dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret has some meaning for someone, in his case the hundreds of innocent children who enjoy the rides safely because of his work.
His shock of finding that the heaven resembles the place where he lived is real. He meets five people, one by one. Each of them reveal a side of his life that he was not aware earlier. As he sees the new angle, he picks up a new meaning.
The author's brilliance shines throughout the book. Some of the quotes about death, life, relationships and other topics are:
And the author grips us right there. Right through the story and till the end. The impact doesn't end when the story ends. That talks volumes about the book.
"This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for." That's the gift that Eddie, a 86 year old war veteran and maintenance man gets which liberates him from his loneliness, guilts, regrets and resentments. He also learns to forgive.
Eddie and the five people who show him the meaning of his life continue to haunt us for a long time. A wonderful story of Eddie that almost unfolds backwards. Chapters about his birthdays act as touch points, connecting the present, the past and the future.
Eddie leads a seemingly wasted life and as we go along his life, we feel sorry for him. His ambitions and optimism get shattered when he is forced by circumstances to take up maintenance of the park, his father's job and becomes Eddie, Maintenance. The war leaves him partially crippled that ravages him physically. His resentment against his father and his interpretation of events leave him bitter.
When he dies and goes to heaven, he meets five important people of his life. He learns important lessons which could be lessons for anyone. What we think is a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park, gets a totally different meaning when we, along with Eddie rediscover the meaning from a different perspective. Life is actually good that can only be spoilt only by our interpretations. We discover that even a life full of dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret has some meaning for someone, in his case the hundreds of innocent children who enjoy the rides safely because of his work.
His shock of finding that the heaven resembles the place where he lived is real. He meets five people, one by one. Each of them reveal a side of his life that he was not aware earlier. As he sees the new angle, he picks up a new meaning.
The author's brilliance shines throughout the book. Some of the quotes about death, life, relationships and other topics are:
"Death ends a life, not a relationship."
"Lost love is still love. 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.
"Holding anger is a poison...It eats you from inside...We think that by hating someone we hurt them...But hatred is a curved blade...and the harm we do to others...we also do to ourselves."
"Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."
"All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair."
"No life is a waste," the Blue Man said. "The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we're alone."
"Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know."
"You have peace," the old woman said, "when you make it with yourself."
"Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with 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."
"Heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners."
"People say they 'find' love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love. And [he] found a certain love with [her], a grateful love, a deep but quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplaceable."
The book ends with "Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."
Absolutely true. We are all full of stories which touch each other 'like pebbles in the river'
2 comments:
Seems an interesting book indeed.
Like this one- Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."
Really, I enjoyed reading it.
The book is full of such powerful statements.
Post a Comment