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For One More Day | 
 enlarge | Author: Mitch Albom
Publisher: Hyperion
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
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Rating:  369 reviews
Sales Rank: 13727
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.2 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 1401303277
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781401303273
ASIN: 1401303277
Publication Date: September 26, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This is the story of Charley, a child of divorce who is always forced to choose between his mother and his father. He grows into a man and starts a family of his own. But one fateful weekend, he leaves his mother to secretly be with his father - and she dies while he is gone. This haunts him for years. It unravels his own young family. It leads him to depression and drunkenness. One night, he decides to take his life. But somewhere between this world and the next, he encounters his mother again, in their hometown, and gets to spend one last day with her - the day he missed and always wished he'd had. He asks the questions many of us yearn to ask, the questions we never ask while our parents are alive. By the end of this magical day, Charley discovers how little he really knew about his mother, the secret of how her love saved their family, and how deeply he wants the second chance to save his own.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 364 more reviews...
To Live In Hearts We Leave Behind Is Not To Die October 8, 2006
Antoinette Klein (Hoover, Alabama USA)
203 out of 211 found this review helpful
Mitch Albom pays homage to all mothers with this novel that beautifully shows the enduring power of a mother's love, a love so strong it can transcend even death. The moral of the story is not particularly original and not even handled in a unique way. But, grab the hankies and prepare to spend several hours reminiscing along with Chick Benetto about the things you wish you had done better with your own mother. Chick Benetto has hit rock bottom---divorced, alcoholic, has-been baseball player, and now comes the ultimate slap-in-the-face---his beloved daughter does not invite him to her wedding. After being shut out of the biggest day in his only child's life, Chick sees no point in continuing his miserable life and attempts suicide. But for his suicide he is drawn once again to Pepperville Beach, to the modest home where he grew up with his mom, dad, and sister. That is, until his dad deserted the family and life changed dramatically. The surprise for Chick is that his mom is still in the house. Intellectually, he knows she died ten years ago but here she is---cooking his food, sharing stories, giving advice.
The reader learns about all the times Chick's mom stood up for him and all the times he let her down. The writing is smooth and poignant, the memories both joyful and sad. If you have lost your own parents, the words will be doubly sad. But Chick has been given a very special gift: he learns that when someone is in your heart, they're never truly gone and they can come back to you, even at unlikely times. Chick has the unheard of luxury of being able to spend just one more day with his mother, having the chance to ask questions about things that have bothered him, finding out at last why his father left, and much more. How does it happen? Is this just another ghost story or a religious experience for non-believers? I think I shed the most tears when I realized at novel's end who was telling the story.
I think sentimental readers will find this one enjoyable and uplifting. So take it for what it is, a nostalgic trip back to childhood, that period of time that never lets you go, even when you're so wrecked it's hard to believe you ever were a child.
Greater Texture and Focus Elevate Another Sentimental Journey Upward September 27, 2006
Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA)
119 out of 148 found this review helpful
I have to admit that I found Mitch Albom's "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" a mostly unsatisfying piece of sentimental treacle, but I was led to his latest book because of the subject matter, the death of one's mother and the palpable regrets afterward for a life underappreciated. Whose life is what makes this a more textured effort since one expects the book to focus primarily on a put-upon mother when it becomes as much an exercise in rebuilding one's self-esteem. The book becomes even more worthwhile when the perspective moves away from the occasional navel-gazing.
Perhaps because I find some of the experiences depicted in the story quite cathartic, I am unexpectedly moved by the author's work this time. The rather simplistic story focuses on former baseball player Chick Benetto who is still depressed over his mother's death eight years later and attempts suicide. In the process, he gets to spend a day with his mother as he reflects on the past. You can see the moral messages coming a mile away and the supernatural aspects take on a somewhat unctuous quality, but Albom manages to make the story resonate in some unexpected ways. It's a quick read that I recommend for anyone who has experienced the loss of a parent.
 A shovel-full of sugar, makes the messages go down... September 29, 2006
Zeno (New Jersey)
52 out of 91 found this review helpful
Not that you won't find yourself choking-up, from time-to-time, along the way. In any case, during the few instances when you are able to suppress your gag-reflex, you may find that candy-coated death may be the most apt description of "For One More Day."
Even for those of us with an occasional literary sweet-tooth, there comes a point when we must ask ourselves if our indulgences are really worth having to endure root canal-- which is just what we experience via Mr. Albom's pen.
At it's heart, "For One More Day" is a rip-off of the basic premise of Thorton Wilder's play "Our Town," dumbed down in it's slender existential musings, and amped up in its elevator-quality Muzak. In addition to Lifetime Channel caliber melodrama, it also features such Hallmark worthy philosophical insights as the importance making the most of every day, living life to the fullest, being in the moment, and saying I love you. Deep stuff. As far as plot and characters go, I realize I'm being vague here, but that's because neither left any lasting impression.
To end on a note of praise, though, in its depictions of an afterlife, "For One More Day" is not altogether far-fetched. Having slogged through it, I believe I now have a much more accurate idea of what purgatory must be like.
 A Book and a Writer Tailor-Made for the Baby Boomers November 9, 2006
Robert Brown (Seattle, WA)
25 out of 34 found this review helpful
I hate to be the 'dog in the manger' on this one, but I found this book very irritating. Not so much in that it's a particularly badly written book (it's not), but its incredible popularity is more an indictment of it's fans rather than it's creator. Mitch Ablom books, in general, and "For One More Day" in particular, are popular for the same reasons McDonalds, Olive Garden, Celine Dion, and Tom Cruise are popular. They provide a mass audience (baby boomers in particular), with a well-packaged, predictable, easily digestable, intellectually nonthreatening, and utterly mediocre product.
"For One More Day" is tailored to the worst in the whiny, self-absorbed baby boomer generation. As the boomers age, they greet the almost universal midlife themes of dissapointment and regret as if they were the very first people to ever experience those emotions, and make a huge deal of broadcasting and analyzing their feelings to death. Who doesn't reach middle age and not feel some regret that they didn't write the Great American Novel, marry the Homecoming Queen/King, or start a fabulously successful dot-com? I guess with the baby boomers it's a particularly bitter pill because they were brought up from the get-go to believe they were oh-so-SPECIAL.
Mitch Ablom has tapped this rich vein of boomer angst to great success. His protagonist, 'Chick' Benetto, is a washed-up ball player with a broken marriage and a drinking problem. In a fit of self-pity, he tries to kill himself and botches that one too. He meets his dead mom, acknowleges he has been a real poop, and finds redemption. Cue the string section and loosen the tear ducts. Oh gag me!!!!
Even some of his 'novel' plot devices are nothing new. Anyone who has read "An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce will be spitting nails at Ablom's shameless cribbing of the books main twist.
The book itself is a childishly easy read. Ablom is no great artist with the English Language, and no one with greater than a third-grade reading ablily will be taxed by this one. Faulkner, Eco, and Melville can rest easy.
The baby boom generation has never been known for it's intellectual horsepower, and this book is tailor-made for the Oprah Nation. A lightweight tome for a lightweight, self-indulgent society.
If I Had One More Day... October 8, 2006
Jonathan Green (Los Angeles, CA USA)
22 out of 38 found this review helpful
I would hunt this Alborn fella down like the snake-oil salesman he is. He abuses weak people's desires to feel better by feeding them treacly motivational glop that appeals to their TV denuded emotions. Meanwhile, he reaps money by the ton. You can bet he feels good. You can also find better writing in e-mails you get asking you to forward it to all your other fool acquaintances so some fictitious dying kid will get a sponge bath from the cast of Desperate Housewives.
Alborn makes book burnings seem like a good idea whose time has come.
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