Review: The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom

My Dad loaned me this short, simple fable because he thought that I would enjoy reading it and it might make good material for a review. My poor dad didn't know what he was getting into. Three times I nearly gave up on this one and twice it had me in tears. Why? Because the story hit me so very close to home.

The Time Keeper is a fable about a man called Dor, who was responsible for the invention of time six thousand years ago. After climbing a tower that is destroyed by God (yes, many biblical implications there, no comment,) Dor is sent to live in a cave where he is made to suffer the consequences of his invention--basically he listens to every man, woman and child on earth begging for more or less time. Then Dor is granted a chance at freedom, on the condition that he find two people--one who is begging for more time on earth and one who wants less time on earth--and help them. And so begins Dor's trip to New York City where he meets the two individuals he can help.

The pair are polar opposites. Sarah Lemon is an intelligent young high schooler who is suffering the consequences of an unrequited love in the most humiliating way possible. Basically she met a boy who was part of the in-crowd, he led her on for a while, she became a little too attached and he blew her off. Then, the arrogant little sod announces Sarah's actions publicly on facebook and she gets to watch as all of his friends make humiliating and degrading comments about her. The comments are bad enough for Sarah to want to end her own life.

Meanwhile, in another part of the city, wealthy businessman Victor Delamonte, is trying to prolong his life. He knows that he is dying, but he has no desire to leave the earth just yet. He decides that being cryogenically frozen is the solution to his problems. Then, his body can be stored until such a time that his illness can be cured and he can live forever.

Naturally, Dor's purpose is to help both Victor and Sarah. The ending, which is both beautiful and surprising touched me quite deeply. But that is not why the story made me cry.

Albom is a skillful storyteller. But anyone who has read The Five People You Meet in Heaven can tell you that. What I wasn't expecting was just how deeply I cared for Victor and Sarah or how much I could identify with both characters, especially Sarah and the sting she feels from crushing on an unsuitable man. Luckily, Sarah is eventually able to rise above it and proves that she can make a real difference in the world, unlike others, who remain in their safe cloistered little clique.

As previously stated, I could also identify with Victor and his fear of his own approaching mortality. Death is a frightening thing. It cannot be reversed and no one knows for certain what happens or how it might feel. And, I think regardless of how healthy someone is or their age, it is easy to start asking questions about whether ones life has been lived to the fullest and what they would change if they had the opportunity to do so.

And then there is Dor himself, who for six thousand years is made to see the consequences of his actions.

The Time Keeper is an interesting and touching fable, easily read and bound to appeal to a broad audience. A great read, but be warned, it made me cry ...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more