THE STRANGER IN THE LIFEBOAT (2021)
By Mitch Albom
Sphere, 204 pages.
★★★★
One of the older values clarification exercises is the lifeboat scenario. If you don’t recall it, an accident crowds too many people into a lifeboat with too few resources. If circumstances forced it, how would you choose whom to sacrifice to boost the survival chances of others?
Now let’s consider another mind game. Have you ever thought it unusual that most of the world’s major religions rely on centuries-old texts? Isn’t it odd that those that believe in a living deity assume that God has had nothing more to say to humankind in thousands of years? Here’s another dilemma. If a savior appeared today, would anyone recognize that person as such?
Mitch Albom is a Christian. Of that there is no doubt. Some people are put off by his novels as they find them proselytizing. The Stranger in the Lifeboat is, however, not entirely what you expect because it places the reader inside of both of the scenarios outlined above. Name whatever deity, prophet, or savior you wish. Once you freeze an image in your mind, can you get past whatever bearded, robed, turbaned, and/or miracle-wielding personality you invoke?
Lifeboat storylines are generally straightforward, as is this one. Jason Lambert, a ridiculously wealthy mogul, has invited a veritable who’s who from the celebrity, sports, political, and business worlds to join him in Cape Verde to schmooze, fish, and luxuriate on the maiden voyage of his super yacht Galaxy. His allegedly indestructible vessel–shades of The Titanic–is KO’d by what is assumed to have been an enraged whale and sinks. At this juncture Albom perhaps has the Old Testament tale of Jonah and the whale in mind, but he then tosses us the first of several curveballs and unless you are very astute or very lucky you will probably whiff.
Just nine people make it to the lifeboat, some from the guest list and others from the below-decks crew meant to serve them: Lambert, an Olympic swimmer, a hairdresser, an UN ambassador, two chefs, a British media executive, a traumatized and mute small girl, and a deckhand named Benji who chronicles the fates of an ever-diminishing passenger list. As they are adrift, they pull aboard a 10th person, an unkempt man who partakes of their water and food. As panic sets in, one distraught passenger calls upon God to save them. The 10th person, the namesake stranger from the title whom no one recalls having been aboard in the first place, staggers the rest by asserting, “I am the lord.”
Would you buy it? Why would a divinity need food and water? And what’s with the odd insistence that none can be saved until all believe in him? Too much sun and not enough water? You probably wouldn’t expect a pompous jerk like Lambert to yield, but then again, he might be one of the first you’d want to offload if you were playing the lifeboat game. Or would it be the stranger? He sure sounds like his elevator doesn’t rise higher than the lobby. Would you ignore him and turn to figuring out how to jerry rig sails, fresh water collection, and fishing gear?
Is the stranger the lord? I’m saying nothing beyond a vague statement that you have a ton of surprises in store based on what I’ve not said. There were at least three things I did not anticipate, so count me among the whiffed.
Albom isn’t a great stylist, but he’s a fine storyteller. If he is preaching in this novel, it is in ways subtle enough to be called nonecumenical, even transtheistic. I think, though, that he wants us to think upon the tendency of believers of all stripes to stuff God into a box. In a sense, he is telling us that some atheists have a point when they reverse Genesis 1:27 and render it, “man created God in his own image.” Albom’s story might appear simplistic to some, but whatever faith or non-faith one embraces it’s worth asking the question: If the divine walked among us, would we know it?
Rob Weir
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