The Cottage Smallholder


stumbling self sufficiency in a small space

Mitch Albom: Tuesdays with Morrie. A review.

 

Photo: Tuesdays with Morrie

Photo: Tuesdays with Morrie

A new Internet friend wrote to me saying how good it must be to have the time to escape through reading. I haven’t been doing this recently. Nor listening to the radio. Just doing the blog and tending my seedlings. All reading has been directed to increasing my knowledge of biodynamic gardening.

“Yes,” I thought when I read her email, “she is right. I need a distraction. To escape into another world.”

The next morning I woke to find that the books had shifted on the big bookshelf beside my bed. We have a lot of books and the books in my bedroom are doubled up on the shelves. In the gap behind a fallen book another caught my eye. It was the simplicity of the cover and the title that attracted me. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.

I don’t remember buying this book. I certainly hadn’t read it. I crept back to bed to join the bickering Min Pins and opened the covers.

Mitch Albom had been very close to his professor at college. Morrie Schwartz was a truly enlightened soul and, as a mentor, brought out the best in him. Mitch lost touch with his professor after he left. He was driven by ambition to work and work and make more and more money. In fact he became a workaholic. Materially successful yet unfulfilled. He didn’t realise this at the time.

By chance he happened to see an interview with Morrie on a late night TV show. He was shocked to see that Morrie was dying of an incurable illness and felt compelled to visit his old professor, whom he hadn’t seen for 16 years. 700 miles later, Morrie was sitting on the porch to greet him even though he hadn’t announced his visit. It was almost as if they hadn’t lost touch.

This book is their last thesis together. It charts the weekly meetings that Mitch and Morrie had until just a few days before he died. There was no sequel by the professor.

It is beautifully written. I felt that I was beside Morrie too. It’s funny, honest, moving and thought provoking. Above all it’s a true story about a man who loved the world and wanted to share his secrets. And about a young man who had achieved so much, in a worldly sense, but had lost his way.

I couldn’t put it down. As I delved deeper and deeper, I realised how precious the teachings are – these are the thoughts of a man who is dying but still able to reach out to the world. His vision both enlarges and simplifies as his world becomes smaller and he becomes more physically helpless.

I put off reading the last two chapters until this afternoon. I knew that I would cry.

I had begun to love Morrie too.


  Leave a reply

9 Comments

  1. Domestic Executive

    Fiona, so pleased this book came to you! I read it years ago when I was travelling in America and remember the tears rolling down my face as the story unfolded. There was a guy sitting next to me on a plane who asked to read over my shoulder and since I finished the book that flight I handed it over for him to start from the beginning.

  2. Tuesdays with Morrie is one of my favourite books! Glad you enjoyed it too.

  3. moggymerlin

    Thanks Fiona for reminding me about this book. I read it a couple of years ago and will do so again this week.

  4. The 5 people you meet in heaven is a fabulous book so i’ll definately give Morrie a try.

  5. Think I need to discover this book. I have another of his – ‘The 5 people you meet in heaven’ which is fiction but also very good, and moving.

  6. This book sounds lovely – you described it beautifully and I will order it at the library tomorrow. Thank you!

  7. That book is a true treasure. It stayed with me a long, Long time.

  8. Cookie Girl

    Me too Joanna sounds great.. I love a good read – it’s one of my favourite things to do – alway has and always will be. I’ve just finished ‘Call the Midwife’ by Jennifer Worth a real eye-opening true account of midwifery in London’s East End in the 1950s – this book made me cry too ..

  9. Sounds beautiful Fiona.Must add that to my wish list

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags are not allowed.

2,261,837 Spambots Blocked by Simple Comments


Copyright © 2006-2024 Cottage Smallholder      Our Privacy Policy      Advertise on Cottage Smallholder


Skip to toolbar
HG