The Stranger in the Lifeboat: A Novel

Product Information

This was the right book for me to read at the end of this crazy year of pandemic during which my husband passed away. It is so easy to question and wonder why did he needlessly have to die, but Mitch Albom and this book helped me to see that the better question is why did God show me so much grace as to have had that great man in my life for nearly 45 years. The structure of the story was fantastic. It comes in three broad timelines with interesting titles:

A STRANGER IN THE LIFEBOAT is an evocative and intriguing story exploring that sometimes the answer to a call for help is ‘no.’ Sometimes the answer is not what you wanted. Maybe we are asking the wrong questions. Faith is a cornerstone of my life. Finding connection within fiction that explores humanity at its most vulnerable within a belief or the struggle to relate to belief help me explore my own limitations. How would I respond under similar circumstances? In lieu of a traditional review, I’m simply sharing thoughts that were triggered by the following concepts and quotes:Mitch has greatly written this masterpiece in a way that forces readers to feel the themes in the story. Why do people believe in god? When do people believe in god? Is it only when people are in trouble they ask god for help? Grief, empathy, love, and guilt, among many others, are the main themes of this book. Mitch has written this story so that it is up to the readers to decide what is right and what is wrong. The connection of human emotions through various life incidents of people is what the story is about. Mitch wants you to connect to all of it, feel it, and then say how you see the world. Because when the lifeboat was found at the end of the shore, there was not a single person present except Benji’s notebook. This is the story of nine survivors of an explosion on the luxury yacht they were on. then they spot a man floating in the waves. When they have pulled the man aboard the raft, he claims to be the Lord and they're faced with a crises of belief. The chapters are numbered, but also titled as Sea, Land and News. The reader immediately knows which part of the parallel storyline is to follow. Did you know a crab will escape its shell thirty times before it dies? ... This world can be a trying place ... Sometimes you have to shed who you were to live who you are” Towards the end, when Benji mourned the death of the sea bird, his grief for his wife and his survivor's guilt (over the lives of all the others who had been lost from the lifeboat and cruise ship) completely overwhelmed him. The author was also probably trying to show that Benji is not a cruel person, for reasons that will become clear later on in the story. The interesting twist in the last third of the novel was somewhat foreseeable - but no spoilers here!

Adrift in a raft after a deadly ship explosion, nine people struggle for survival at sea. Three days pass. Short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him in. Think of Mitch Albom as the Babe Ruth of popular literature, hitting the ball out of the park every time he’s at bat.”— Time I'm still scratching my head, trying to decide whether Albom succeeded in pulling the wool over the readers' eyes? Were all the passengers real? Was this in fact a concocted story - a prank, as was suggested at one point? Was Dobby the grand orchestrator of the entire disaster at sea? Or did he leave a bogus manuscript behind for Jarty LaFleur to read, for his own devious motives? I know that these thoughts will chase each other in my mind for weeks to come - and this is the sign of a good book. We may not love or enjoy all of its parts, but the sum of those parts have left us with quite a lot to think about and discuss in Mitch Albom's latest offering. The Stranger in the Lifeboat” is no different. As each of the survivors of the lifeboat grapples with the seeming inevitability of their death, the regrets of their life and whether to trust the strange man in their raft who calls himself the Lord, they also grapple with greater themes of faith and forgiveness.The last paragraph: “In the end, there is the sea and the land and the news that happens between them. To spread that news, we tell each other stories. Sometimes the stories are about survival and sometimes those stories, like the prescence of the Lord, are hard to believe. Unless believing is what makes them true.” The point of the book is that "god" exists and is watching, and that there is a heaven. Pretty much the theme of his previous books.