Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)*****

I’m quite tempted to give this review just two words – ‘read’ and ‘it’. But that would be a bit of a rubbish review, and I’m not sure this book would appeal to most people - although in theory it wouldn’t appeal to me, and I loved it. It is extremely sentimental, and there’s lots of discussion of things I’d usually not want to read about like bottom-wiping. But it was easy to make an exception for Tuesdays with Morrie.

It’s a true story about Mitch Albom and his old college professor, Morrie Schwarz. They were good friends at college, but then they lost touch. Then Mitch hears on the news that Morrie is dying, and he goes to see him, and the two become friends all over again.

Morrie is a lovely, wonderful, amazing, inspiring man, and it’s easy to see why Mitch loves him so much. It’s almost a romantic book. There’s never any suggestion of sex, but there’s a very strong closeness between the characters. Morrie teaches Mitch about life and death, and they clearly see themselves as teacher and student, as it was when they were at college. Yet at the same time, as Morrie’s illness takes hold, he needs more and more help from the people around him, including Mitch. That would usually seem almost like a parent and child relationship, with Mitch as the parent. But it’s not.

I’m not going to say this is a life-changing book. That’s just a total cliché, and I imagine the books that have changed people’s lives are probably completely different books for each person. And, much as I’d like to say it has, Tuesdays with Morrie hasn’t really changed my life. Even though Morrie has some wonderful things to say about the world that made me feel as though I ought to appreciate it a lot more, it’s not a feeling that’s going to last. I’m too lazy and self-obsessed.

But in a way this book has changed my life because it is a book I think about a lot. I think about Morrie and Mitch, and about how lucky they were to know each other, both because they’re really lovely people and because they had such a special relationship. Mitch makes it very clear how much he loves Morrie, but he also makes it clear he’s pretty wonderful himself, although without giving the impression that he knows it. It’s really heartening – and amazing - to know that people like Morrie existed in the world. Maybe there are more people like that: Mitch Albom could certainly be one of them. Maybe there are also people who could learn to be like that.

This book might well have been published whether Albom could write or not – Morrie’s story was featured on national television, and it seems as though he became a bit of a celebrity. But Albom is a brilliant writer. I haven’t read any of his other books, so I’m not that sure what he’s like as a writer of fiction, but Tuesdays with Morrie is wonderfully written. Albom’s writing style is quite simple, but he puts a lot across in few words.

There was a small example of what I presume to be Albom’s fiction at the end of the book. I didn’t enjoy it, as I felt it was completely inappropriate that there should be a completely different story to read after Morrie’s story had come to an end. Maybe I should have stopped reading, but I wanted to know if there was some connection between this and the main story – I wanted to read more about Morrie! There didn’t seem to be any connection, but Tuesdays with Morrie is the sort of book that can leave you stunned. I probably wasn’t in the right state of mind for working out what a new story might mean.

I finished reading Tuesdays with Morrie on a Tuesday. I like coincidences like that.