Book Review: The first phone call from heaven

Book: The first phone call from heaven
Author: Mitch Albom
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 308
Price: Rs499

There is no consolation prize quite like the notion of heaven. For the bitterness and finality of loss is tempered by the idea that “a better place” awaits the worthy. It doesn’t help then that there is no communication corridor between this better place and the mortal world. There will always be skeptics and there will always be believers, and New York Times bestselling author Mitch Albom’s latest novel will naturally divide readers based on their position.  

The idea of a telephone connecting Heaven and Earth seems too prosaic to hold water at first. Yet, what is the appropriate medium for a conversation between the departed and the alive? Albom’s novel is no supernatural mystery; there are no paranormal visitors or Ouija boards to disguise the sheer implausibility of such contact. Instead, he creates the fictional town of Coldwater in Michigan, USA, and traces how a series of phone calls from the dead affects the lives of their relatives or associates, and then the citizens of Coldwater, with a rippling effect that could touch the world at large.

Albom follows the stories of a few characters: Sully, a grieving husband and father to a young son, a struggling news journalist, a preacher, and a policeman, among others.  Not content to accept these proclaimed “miracles” where the voices of the dead pass on brief messages to their loved ones, Sully begins to investigate the incidents leading to a less than surprising climax.

More interesting, is the way Albom balances the fictional story with accounts of the history of the telephone itself, positioning the telephone as a device of love and communication. “But the very first telephonic conversation, between Bell and Thomas Watson, standing in separate rooms, contained these words: Come here. I want to see you. In the uncountable human phone conversations since then, that concept has never been far from our lips.”

Nabokov movingly writes in Speak, Memory, that it is an unknown abyss that stands on each side from the cradle to the grave. Yet, “man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.” The First Phone Call from Heaven maintains a pacey race to the end as the citizens of the town are pulled out of an economic slump and winter daze, abandoning all pretense of calm, to become the very center of media frenzy, and TV channels vie with each other to present this incredible story.

Writing about a life after death is not in itself a unique proposition. Even a children’s novel may touch on the unpitying way death severs the closest of relationships. “And anyway, its not as though I’ll never see mum again, is it?” remarks Luna about her dead parent in Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix. Albom’s novel is not a challenging read that will make a reader rethink one’s argument, rather it is a sweetly written article of faith. There is no philosophical bone to gnaw on in this novel. Do the residents of Coldwater really hear messages from their departed mothers, sisters, and loved ones? Albom places both believers and skeptics in his fictional world, but ultimately, as he points out, we all hear what we want to.