The Lovely Bones

I had heard of this book years ago when I was much younger, too young to read it. I remember somebody in my life, my mother or brother or somebody older than me, telling me I was too young to read it. It stayed with me for years until I finally got a copy from a clearance box somebody left out on their front garden.

I loved every thing this book did.

It portrays grief in such a unique way, something I'd never seen done before. Without revealing too much, it truly goes into the nitty-gritty of what dealing with loss and how to grow from it happens for different people, how people move on from the death of their loved one and the conflicting feelings that come with it. I loved the framing device of the dead girl from heaven watching her show more family and friends go through life after her death. I also really resonated with Ruth, who didn't know Susie very well but still is deeply affected by her death. This part struck me specifically because I have experienced the loss of an acquaintance that really affected me; even though we weren't close, I still think about him often and think about his untimely death.

I feel like this book truly does explore all avenues of grief in a really interesting way. The only part of it I didn't really like was the supernatural element towards the end involving Ray, but other people have written at length about why that part was problematic. I just thought it was highly unnecessary. show less

It's a funny thing--generally, I stay away from books that are said to be about grief or grieving, as I've simply had enough of it in my own life that I'd rather not escape to a book and find it there. Going into this book, then, I was skeptical of enjoying it or even staying interested. The brief inside-cover reviews I read didn't raise my expectations in their comments, even when one mentioned that you may well end up reading the book in one sitting (as a heavy reader, I can profess to having read more than one 300+ page book in one sitting, but I laughed at the comment being here). Simply, though, I was wrong.

From the very beginning of this story, I was absolutely engrossed. Yes, the beginning is hard to take, but the style of the show more novel and the very believability of the characters and voices make it fast and engrossing, only adding to the suspense of the plot. The freshness of this story, and the breadth of its ambition, made it well worth the read. In the end, I loved it, and if you're remotely curious, I strongly recommend it. I can't imagine how they turned it into a movie (since I haven't seen it, I can't see whether the movie sticks to the book's narrative or not), but I have no doubt that the book is itself worth the time. Absolutely recommended.

Start it, force your way through the beginning, and then keep going---it's a wonderful journey and time well spent. show less

How do you describe in words a violation done against you that rips your soul from your body? How do you put yourself back together after your heart, body, and spirit have been ravaged? The answer – you don’t. Susie Salmon is caught in between heaven and earth, and from there she shares with us her story. A story of how she was raped, murdered, and never to be found again. But more than just a story of brutal violence, The Lovely Bones is a story about letting go, of grief, of loss, and ultimately of the people we leave behind.

The first chapter into the book, I knew this wasn’t like any other story I have read. My stomach churned as the author describes how and where Susie is abducted and eventually murdered. She holds nothing show more back in the description and imagery so that you as the reader are left reeling in horror at the inhumanity and sheer evil that emanates from one single person. If the central focus of the story is to put a face on what evil looks like, I would have been left feeling hollow and scarred. But Alice Sebold goes on to weave a story from Susie’s perspective about love and how that love keeps us anchored to earth. She paints a story about how a family is left to deal with the pieces and memories of a daughter who was torn away, and in the end understanding that however final death may feel, a part of her will always be found their everyday moments.
I spent the first half of the book wandering and hoping that this guy, this monster would be found, caught and locked up until the end of his days, but by the end of the book, it was no longer about him, but about Susie and her relationship and love for the family she left behind. The journey of brokenness and healing in the end was front stage rather than the fate of the perpetrator. I will probably never read The Lovely Bones again, not for the lack of it being a good book, but rather the first time around is enough to haunt me forever. show less

The Lovely Bones was a lot more than I expected it to be. The characters in this book are impressively fleshed out, and Susie's family members have all become real figures to me -- their mourning and changing interpersonal relationships were touching, believable, and well developed in the novel. This book was both terrifying and gripping, keeping me guessing at every turn of the page and challenging me to ask myself how I felt about its criminal characters. Sebold truly considers each of her characters as an individual with rational decisions, leading her to explore empathy in the understanding of these people regardless of their actions. It is this compassion and drive for imagination that has fueled such an intelligently crafted book.

A friend dismissed this novel as "a pointless story, lazily told." I agree.

What makes the pointlessness of the novel so aggravating is the selection of subject matter: the rape and murder of a child, and its terrible aftermath. I'm not suggesting that such subject matter should be off-limits for fiction, but I am suggesting that if an artist wants to go there, it'd better be worth the trip. In short, she'd better have something damned important to say that justifies (and indeed requires) the fictional portrayal of such horrors. To treat this subject matter simply for the sake of thrills is wholly unconscionable.

When I'm feeling generous, I'm inclined to allow that Sebold wanted to say something important, something deep, about family, show more love, or connections between people, and that she chose her subject matter as appropriate for the expression of those ideas. But even granting this, I'm calling her out for lacking the necessary skill to carry out the artistic task--and for not recognizing her lack of skill and maturity as an artist. Perhaps she should have attempted this book later in her career. At this point, the hollowness of the book lends a sick sort of leering quality to her treatment of a child rape/murder.

Even putting aside this major flaw, there are other problems with the writing that keep the novel from succeeding.

For a book that has so much to do with blood and love, it ends up feeling strangely bloodless. Too much craft and not enough caring or passion. One wonders why the author felt compelled to tell this story.

While the workmanlike prose is effective in evoking simple emotions, in the end the novel feels strangely devoid of feeling. With the exception of brief and infrequent flights into the ecstatic or lyrically poetic (often lasting no more than a sentence or two), nothing in the language of the novel is remarkable, and nothing in its style sets it apart. In some ways it feels like an exercise in the craft of writing, lacking conviction.

To be fair, this could be the result of the author's attempt to stay true to the central conceit of the novel: the story is told through the eyes of a murdered child observing her family on earth from what she calls "heaven," a perspective that (in this telling) includes a certain emotional distancing from the world of the living that increases over time. This device does allow for an unusual and intriguing mixture of first-person and third-person omniscient narratives, which is one of the book's more interesting features. Unfortunately, it also limits the author's diction to that of an average 14-year-old American girl. More problematically, as mentioned above, the vision of life after death here gives us a narrator who is increasingly emotionally detached from the events she relates. If the murdered girl doesn't care all that much about what happens, why should the reader?

Perhaps the author wanted to create an emotional distance in the narrator (and reader) to convey the distance, the letting-go, the sense of remove that is here associated with death. After all, we might say that death cures all passions. Yet this distancing effect seems to contradict of the novel's other central themes: that some passions can and do transcend death, or at least survive it. The problem is that, in this book, passion is reduced to something more akin to general interest or even mild curiosity--a far, far cry from the kind of intensity of feeling the reader is asked to believe might suffice to move heaven and earth, or the border between them.

Despite the promise of the story's somewhat different point of view, the writing fails to rise to the level demanded by its intense and tragic subject. If you're going to write about the damage done to a family when a child is murdered, or the ties that bind the dead to the living, you had better reach deeper into your soul than this book does--or at least offer up some insight or understanding that goes beyond a conventional tugging at heartstrings. show less

This is the sort of book that takes you by the throat and hold you in a death grip like Darth Vader. I say this because there are times when I could not breathe while reading The Lovely Bones because I was either actively holding my breath, or choking on the different expressions of heartbreak. In truth, every emotion (think stages of grief) floats just under the icy surface of reality as a dead girl narrates "life" after murder. Susie Salmon was an ordinary girl who knew right from wrong; knew the man in the cornfield wasn't quite right, but yet curiosity got the better of her. Now, she is suspended in this alternate universe of "heaven" while watching her family, friends, and community cope with her murder. In her heaven, reality is a show more school-like atmosphere while she blandly looks down on the world she left behind. She is unmoved when her mother seeks a drastic remedy for grief, or when her would-be boyfriend almost finds her body.
What impressed me the most about The Lovely Bones was the end. Sebold did not feel pressured to give into a Hollywood ending. It might be a spoiler alert, but the ending is more realistic than what you would see in a movie. I'm alright with that. show less

OK this book started out interesting (mystery!), and then quickly became terrible. I might have been able to get over the heaven part, but there is just no way, I can get over the [SPOILERS] end where the way she makes peace is by possessing her friend's body to have sex with her boyfriend. WTF! I'm not sure what message this is trying to send ...? that we have to have sex before we die? that our life is only worth something if we've had sex with someone? that we must have sex with someone we like to grow up? I definitely am not a fan of any of those messages. And the using her friend's body to do it was kind of creepy and weird and I don't get why a book about rape would have that as an ending in a positive light?! This part completely show more surprised me and I nearly threw the book across the room in shock and horror. HOW did the author think this was a good way to end the book!? Why is this book even popular! show less