“There are many, many things I’d change,” says Mitch Albom, discussing the notion of doing things over again.
That’s the premise of his new novel Twice, where the protagonist, Alfie, has the ability to jump back in time and, with the benefit of hindsight, to do things differently.
The gift is discovered at eight years of age when his mother dies suddenly. The sorrow and guilt this unleashes triggers a latent ability to revisit past actions and to choose a different course.
Alfie does so numerous times during the book, undoing perceived mistakes but inevitably encountering unforeseen consequences, particularly in relation to love.
RM Block
So what would Albom do with the same power?
“I’d think about changing many, many things,” the author and philanthropist replies, speaking from his home in Detroit.
“Sometimes people are surprised to hear me say that, because, for some reason, they think that if you’ve written inspirational books in the past, that somehow everything is great in your life. That you’ve planned it all.
“And that’s totally not true. I could probably rattle off 20 things I would change right now. But – and that’s the big but – if you said to me you have to unlearn what you learned from your mistakes, then my answer would be no.
“Because every mistake that I’ve made, everything that I would go back and change has in some way influenced the decisions I made afterwards.”
The notion of errors having long-term benefits is something Albom is certainly familiar with. An award-winning sportswriter with the Detroit Free Press, his life took an unexpected turn one evening in 1995 when he stumbled across a TV interview with his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz.
Schwartz revealed to ABC Nightline he had the terminal illness ALS, prompting Albom to reconnect with him for the first time in 16 years. He began visiting him every Tuesday, talking to him about life’s lesson and soaking up his wisdom.
That in turn led to the idea of writing a memoir to cover Schwartz’s huge medical bills. However, Albom experienced serious headwinds when he pitched the proposal. Multiple publishers dismissed the idea as too boring or said Albom was too specialised as a sportswriter for it to succeed.
A welcome breakthrough then led to a big error: Doubleday committed, asking him to write 300 pages. Albom triple-spaced the typed manuscript, but several days later received a concerned call.
“They said, ‘We paginated this, we put it in and it comes out to 170 pages. It’s going to be this really thin little book.’”
“And I said, ‘Well, that’s all I got. I’m not going to make stuff up just to make it thicker. I told the story and that’s all I have.’”
Doubleday went with it, the format worked and the rest is, as they say, history.
Tuesdays with Morrie was a colossal hit, stunning the industry. The initial print run was a modest 20,000 copies but it became a runaway success, defying all expectations and remaining in the New York Times Best Seller list for many years. It has sold more than 20 million copies.
It has also been a guide for people in terms of how to live well. Morrie’s wisdom is wise and principled, with insights and guidelines that Albom continues to promote in a weekly podcast.
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There’s a lot of morality in there but while Albom is comfortable discussing such topics, he becomes guarded when asked about US politics.
“I’m trying to write things for people to be inspired by and about how we live,” he says. “And I find that the minute you start diving into politics, you lose all of that, and everybody just starts scurrying to their side.”
So, no insight into what he thinks about Donald Trump and others. However, he does open up when asked what Morrie would make of the modern world.
“I think he’d be broken-hearted,” he says. “I think he’d feel that people are so cruel to one another, and that we have alienated ourselves through social media and through these phones that everybody is surgically attached to.
“I’m sure he would not have a cell phone, or if he had one, it wouldn’t have pictures on it or whatever. He would just use it as a phone phone.”
For Albom, the loss of the ability to connect is a big problem.
“If you told Morrie about how kids will sit at a table, and they’ll be on their phones, and they’ll be typing, texting someone who’s 12ft away, and they’ll still prefer to text them rather than actually talk to them, I think he would be very sad.
“I do a podcast about Tuesdays with Morrie, and so I’m constantly rereading the transcripts of all of our conversations. And it’s notable the amount of times he talks about how mean we are to one another, and how we’re losing our sensitivity to one another.
“This was in the mid 1990s, 30 years ago. I think he would only feel that we’ve gone further down that path.
“So in some ways, I’m happy that he doesn’t have to see it.”
The success of Tuesdays with Morrie was just the beginning.
In his dozen books since then Albom has replicated that template; shorter works, an emphasis on philosophy and belief and, in the case of his fiction, a healthy dollop of magic realism.
The last of these featured heavily in his next book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Albom’s first novel was inspired by his uncle Eddie, who fought in the second World War and had a near-death experience following a heart attack.
“He said that he remembered rising out of his body, lifting above the hospital bed and looking down on his body,” Albom says, smiling. “And at the edge of the hospital bed were all his dead relatives, waiting for him.
“Of course, as a kid, you hear this, and you go, ‘What did you do, what did you do?’ And, him being him, he said, ‘I told them, Get the hell out of here. I’m not ready for any of you yet.’
“Apparently he scared them back into heaven. He went back into his body, and he lived many more years.”
The book was another publishing sensation, selling more than 10 million copies. Albom had found his calling and 22 years on, is still writing about magic.
In Twice, protagonist Alfie meets his childhood friend Gianna again after several years apart, follows her to college and, using his gift, tries to win her over.
Things get increasingly complex, with the consequences of his time jumps leading to unforeseen problems.
It’s an intriguing read but, given the twists and turns, was the novel difficult to structure?
“In a book like this, one of the challenges is that once you’re going to create magic, your magic has to be consistent,” he says. “Fortunately, I’ve been through this a few times.
“In the Five People You Meet in Heaven, I had to create a world where there was a set of rules. The same with The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto. So I’ve had these examples and practice with making up a set of magical rules and then having to abide by them.
“In Twice the rules are you get to go back one time, and you get to do everything over again. But then from that point on, you have to live forward. You don’t get to then jump back to where you originally were. And so Alfie has to relive his life over.
“Then I said, okay, well, if that’s going to happen, what does that mean for this? And what does that mean for that? That becomes the complicated part of it.
“The biggest challenge with magical realism, is that you have to be real to the magic, and you have to be consistent. You can’t have a set of rules on page 25 and then break them on page 150.
“But once you understand the rules of the game, you can operate within them.”
Someone once told me that when it comes to relationships, some people are always searching for the new car smell, but it is doomed to fade
The book feels tailor made for film, with a twist towards the end which should translate perfectly to the screen. Indeed, Albom confirms Netflix swooped even before the book’s publication in early October, purchasing the rights and commissioning Paul Weitz to direct it.
Love features big in the plot, and it is one area of Archie’s life where there are no second chances. If he screws up, that can’t be undone.
So what does Albom hope readers take away from Twice?
“I hope they’d think about their own lives and ask if they redid certain things, what would they sacrifice in terms of how it shaped them? And then when it comes to love, which is the big theme of the book, that they would think about what true love really means.
“Someone once told me that when it comes to relationships, some people are always searching for the new car smell. When you get a new car, there’s that scent that only exists when your car is new, but it is doomed to fade. And if you go chasing the new car smell all the time, you’re never going to be happy.
“But that’s not what true love really is. True love is the kind of thing that you work at and you mould.”
He suggests a lot of people turn their backs on that when things start to get difficult. “Alfie, in the book, kind of does the same thing, and yet he has this big realisation after he gives it up, ‘what did I just do?’
“There’s a reason in the book that love is an exception to the rule, because I do think that love is an exception to pretty much every rule.
“And, in many cases,” he says, “I think love is the rule.”
Twice is published by Sphere
