Mitch Albom's "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" is a lot like a romantic comedy: It makes you feel good but it's unbearably cliché.

I wouldn't necessarily call it trite, like some romantic comedies. But I will say that, like romantic comedies, the message it boasted was nice - but it definitely didn't teach me anything new or profound.

The story is about Eddie, an 83-year-old man who has outlived all of his family members, and whose job it is to take care of the carnival grounds his father had tended to. He never feels as if he amounts to much of anything, and when he dies in a freak accident, he winds up in heaven and meets five people who teach him about his life, the meaning in it, and how they are connected to him.

In a lot of ways, this book reminds me of a movie. It is no different than how movies fit a perfect little plot into an hour and a half where there is a problem and a solution that occurs neatly in that time frame. However, 1. Solutions aren't always neat and 2. Sometimes things aren't solved at all. Feeding our culture more with pieces of entertainment like this is dangerous. It is noble to supply jaded individuals whose lives aren't working out with a hope that there is something grander after the end. It might strip people of their proactive edge - their will to get up and change things.

Even before I was done with the book, I was ready to rip it apart (figuratively). I've read Albom's nonfiction work, "Tuesdays with Morrie," and I didn't like it as much as everyone else did. It was good, but it didn't change my life, and this didn't either.

The message Albom conveys is cliché. People who pick up books like these are really not the people who need them. And the ones who would benefit from these obvious morals would never pick up the book. Call me cynical, but I wonder if there is a point in writing books like this with such a fluffy, unoriginal and overdone message at all. One of my biggest complaints with art, religion, and people in our society in general, is this obsession with a world other than our own. Why must we spend all of our days speculating about the afterlife, waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel? Albom addressed this concern of mine, and instead of depicting an entirely new dimension, he made the afterlife a place where life on earth is explained to you. The entire book is about the interconnectedness of people. If there is a heaven, it is exactly what I would like it to be like.

Albom is a very effective writer though. He has the ability to help a reader feel as if he/she knows the character is applaudable, and he was able to do it multiple times. Usually, when reading a book, I cannot get a clear depiction of the scene and characters in my head. The authors are too busy driving home their profound point, so I make most of it up - that works well enough. However, due to Albom's book being a cliché broken record of a thousand other books about the beauty of life, Albom has more time to pay attention to the little things.

Albom knows his characters, and he wants you to know them too. They make the book worthwhile, especially their interactions with each other. To top it off, his imagery is truly beautiful. Each and every scene conjured vivid images in my head - I felt like a child reading this book, as my imagination stared pleasantly dumbfounded at the wondrous images it created.

Regardless of whether or not you believe in heaven, you might find his depiction of heaven particularly moving. I appreciated the way Albom's heaven had everything to do with life on Earth - the two were not separate entities.

The book's structure is enjoyable and the way it yo-yos between Eddie meeting people in heaven, events in his life, and specifically past birthdays he's had. My appreciation ends there however.

What worries me about this novel is that, from what I've observed in myself and in others, it is not hard to get obsessed with the idea of there being a "natural order" to things. Again, I'm not saying there is or there isn't, but I do think if there is, then it is not something human perception can grasp.

The book is filled with quotable excerpts that did indeed make me smile, or at least nod, and you might do a little nodding as well. I agreed with the lessons that were spelled out, I just didn't understand why he thought they needed to be. He told a nice story, sure, but it wasn't anything groundbreaking. If Albom's audience isn't the KKK, terrorists, or Neo-Nazis, then his message isn't anything new.

Read this book for the characters and the imagery, but don't expect to love much more than that. Read it when you're outlook on life becomes a little too bleak, and hopefully its idealism won't delve you deeper into the throes of cynicism.

If you like this, you'd also like: Chicken Soup for the Soul, Life's Little Instruction Book.