The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Book Group May 2021 book

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Columba
Columba
May 2021
9:17pm, 25 May 2021
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Columba
As I really appreciated Dubliners, does that suggest I might enjoy Ulysses?
Serendippily
Serendippily
May 2021
10:03pm, 25 May 2021
21,951 posts
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Serendippily
I enjoyed the artist as a young man. I may have also enjoyed Ulysses. Despite it being a whopper of a book it was at a time when I sped read with such vim it’s hard to know what I read and what I skimmed. And it was all stream of consciousness anyway
Diogenes
Diogenes
May 2021
10:07pm, 25 May 2021
60,121 posts
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Diogenes
I enjoyed Stephen Hero which is an early version of POTAAAYM. The title drew me in.
Columba
Columba
May 2021
9:44pm, 27 May 2021
21,081 posts
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Columba
I have read POTAAAYM, but it was a long time ago.
Peregrinator
Peregrinator
May 2021
10:38pm, 28 May 2021
853 posts
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Peregrinator
The Five People You Meet In Heaven

It says something about the Human condition that artists and writers find it easier to create a convincing Hell than Heaven. One suspects that more people have read Dante's Inferno with its gruesome score settling (there are a surprising number of Popes in Dante's Hell), and Purgatory where punishments are twisted to fit the sin, than ever read Paradise. Here is Francesco Botticini’s vision of Heaven (in the National Gallery):



An empyrean flying saucer where the Great and the Good sit with angels and cherubs thinking "God really is terrific" for ever and ever. An omnipotent God might be able to make that fun, but it is a hard sell.

The Five People You Meet In Heaven isn't actually set in Heaven, but in some other space where we come to terms with our lives. In this, one person's story is told and analysed in various ways through the five people. It is an interesting structure to examine a life, although it feels a bit like a party game. What is clunky is that TFPTYMIH has very evident life philosophies which result in fridge-magnet platitudes like:

Life has to end, Love doesn't
Hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves
Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside
Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else
Strangers are just family that you have yet to come to know

But I am looking forward to checking if reading TFPTYMIH has made me a better person, with the five people I meet when I die.
LindsD
LindsD
May 2021
10:47pm, 28 May 2021
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LindsD
:)

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About This Thread

Maintained by McGoohan
This little person went to heaven
this little person went to hell
this little person went to purgatory
and this little person has gone
and this little person went 'weep, weep, weep'
all the way home



Starring Jon Voight!!!

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