The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom

Genre: Fiction/Thought-Provoking

Date of Publication: September 4^th, 2012

Memorable Quotation: “Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And because of this, man suffers a paralyzing fear no other creature endures. A fear time is running out.” (pg. 8)

Storyline: A+

Pace of Story: A+

Characters: A+

Ending: A

Overall Grade: A+

Lasting Impression: This book will change your life and the way you look at the concept of time.

When everyone is born, we are given all of the time we will ever need to accomplish our goals, find our true loves, and create the lives that will make us happiest.  Unfortunately, measuring time in units of seconds, hours, minutes, and days do nothing but add stress to our lives and make us forget that we are never losing any “time,” it is all there; it just depends on how we use it.  Similar to his novels The Five People You Meet in Heaven and For One More Day, Mitch Albom delves into areas of the human psyche we overlook everyday and challenges the reader to look past the bustle of everyday life and notice how much the little things matter.

Dor, a man who is alive during the creation of the Tower of Babel, has an interest in measuring, which inadvertently leads him to creating the measurement of time.  Similar to the way Eve defies the Garden of Eden by eating the apple, Dor defies God by taking away the gift of living by the day and making humans measure their lives with Dor’s time instruments (i.e. sundials and clock).  Because of this, Dor finds himself punished for eternity by being forced to listen to all the complaints people have about not having “enough time” and other phrases that incorporate the limited amount of time they believe they have.

To rectify his creation, Dor is told to change the lives of two individuals, one who wants more time and one who wants time to stop.  The journey he goes on, as well as the two people’s lives he will change, show the way we must realize that time is only a measurement and should not control our actions or the way we choose to live.

The characters in Albom’s novel are incredibly relatable and make Albom’s message of focusing on the days we have, not the time we have left, that much more powerful. The way the novel is written is exceptional, in its delivery of the delicate subjects of time and death as well as the way we are reminded to appreciate those who love us, for when they are gone there is no turning back time. 

The lessons that Albom has Dor teach the two individuals will stick with the reader for a long time, if not for the rest of their lives because each one of us tends to be someone who either wants less time or wants more of it:

For those who can relate to believing that the end is near or they want less time, Albom personifies through Dor that yesterdays are endings while tomorrows are beginnings, we cannot end what has not begun. For those who wish they had more time, they must remember that the concept of immortality, although tempting, should not be thought of as an immediate solution because knowing you will never die takes the thrill and joy out of everyday life and would be replaced with a boredom of endless, repetitive days.

Albom has outdone himself in The Time Keeper, encouraging the reader through the perspectives of three amazing individuals to stop looking at your watches and clocks long enough to realize that we can all live better lives if we start measuring our lives by the moments, not the seconds.

~Shelly-Beans