The Stranger in the Lifeboat: A Novel

by Mitch Albom

“Then why don’t people come back to Earth after they die?” The stranger smiled. “Why would they want to?”

It has always been a mystery to me, Annabelle, how beauty and anguish can share the same moment.

Suddenly, the wind stopped. The air went dead. All sounds disappeared. It was like that T. S. Eliot poem, “the still point of the turning world,” as if the entire planet held its breath.

Hoist up the John B’s sails See how the main sail sets .

Hoist up the John B’s sails See how the main sail sets . . . Mrs. Laghari took the next line. Call for the captain ashore Let me go home . .

Let me go home, I want to go home, Well, I feel so broke up, I want to go home

Let me go home, let me go home, I want to go home, yeah, yeah . . .

“Survive until tomorrow.”

and a car magazine, which, despite having been soaked and dried many times, has been read by nearly everyone in the raft. It reminds us of the world we left behind.

“For what it’s worth, if you really are God, I never called for you. Not once. Not even in the water.” “And yet I still listen,” the Lord said.

Even on a lifeboat, people have their modesty.

This lowkey contradicts what the author said earlier, about how every individual was now equal and half naked. Status no longer mattered now that they were all in the same situation.

Maybe laughter after someone dies is the way we tell ourselves that they are still alive in some way. Or that we are.

I often felt she stared at things but saw something else. Broken people do that.

I could hear the boast in the ocean’s torturous roar. You will never escape. I will have you all.

“God starts things,” he said. “Man stops them.”

“They’re all gone, Alice! Even the Lord.” Which is when the little girl finally spoke. “I am the Lord,” she said. “And I will never leave you.”

spoilerrrr lollll

LeFleur felt as if a character from a book had come to life. He knew things about this man that the man himself had not yet revealed. He had to be patient, draw him out.

A group of shipwrecked people think they have God in the boat? Why not pin Him down? Hold Him accountable for all the horrors He allowed in this world?

“When someone passes, Benjamin, people always ask, ‘Why did God take them?’ A better question would be ‘Why did God give them to us?’ What did we do to deserve their love, their joy, the sweet moments we shared?

“Those moments are a gift. But their end is not a punishment.

Feeling loss is part of why you are on Earth. Through it, you appreciate the brief gift of human existence, and you learn to cherish the world I created for you.

But the human form is not permanent. It was never meant to be. That gift belongs to the soul.

“Survive this voyage. And once you do, find another soul in despair. And help them.”

May the stranger in your lifeboat always guide you, inspire you, and shine upon you.