Bestselling author Mitch Albom packs powerful emotions into his short, pleasing novels. His latest, For One More Day (2006, Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown, 197 pages), stays true to form.
Albom, a Detroit sports columnist, once a professional musician and radio-show host, earlier wrote the acclaimed Tuesdays With Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. His plots are simple, yet meaningful. In For One More Day, protagonist Chick Benetto, a former baseball player, becomes alienated from his family, dips into despair and slides into alcoholism.
“It’s funny. I met a man once who did a lot of mountain climbing. I asked him which was harder, ascending or descending. He said without a doubt descending, because ascending you were so focused on reaching the top, you avoided mistakes. The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature. You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up. I could spend a lot of time talking about my life after baseball. But that pretty much says it.”
Uninvited to his daughter’s wedding, Chick opts for suicide. Where better to end life than where it began? Beset by regrets, he drives to Pepperville Beach, his childhood home.
Several tragic surprises position Chick to learn the truth about his family. At the end, who wouldn’t wish For One More Day to make amends with a lost loved one? “When someone is in your heart, they’re never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times.”
The special person suddenly greeting Chick is Posey, his deceased mother. “So many times, I chose not to be with her. Too busy. Too tired. Don’t feel like dealing with it…. You count the hours you could have spent with your mother. It’s a lifetime in itself.”
As Posey says, “Life goes quickly.... It’s such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.”
Some readers may regard For One More Day as Albom’s best book. Considering his previous successes, that says a lot.
“Because there was a ghost involved, you may call this a ghost story,” Albom writes. “But what family isn’t a ghost story? Sharing tales with those we’ve lost is how we keep from really losing them.”
Approval rating: 79 per cent.
For more information: www.littlebrown.co.uk
.
(June 26, 2007)
ARCHIVES
|
