The Lovely Bones

I wish that Amazon would let us give one book a year a sixth star to denote how special that book is; this is that book this year, this decade. This book is good, real good, Lonesome Dove good, Terms of Endearment good. This review has spoilers - don't read the review - just go read the book. Susie Salmon is, was, a fourteen year old girl who was raped, murdered, and dismembered just before Christmas 1973 - that is not a plot spoiler, it is the first sentence of the book. Susie is telling her story from her heaven - everyone has their own heaven. She tells the story of her murder; she watches her murderer; she watches her family and friends. This novel is the story of those people she watches and the effect that her death has on others. When someone asks Susie's mother what her daughter's name was she responds "'Susie', my mother said, bracing up under the weight of it a weight that she naively hoped might lighten someday, not knowing that it would only go on to hurt in new and varied ways for the rest of her life." [p 3] We see these changes as they continue to have different effects on everyone she knew. Watching her parents she sees that "[f]or three nights he hadn't known how to touch my mother or what to say. Before, they had never found themselves broken together. Usually, it was one needing the other but not both needing each other, and so there had been a way, by touching, to borrow from the stronger one's strength."[p 16] A second story line is the search for Susie's killer - Mr Harvey - who for most of the novel is hiding in plain sight. Her father has suspicions but the police can not act on them, so Susie's sister breaks into the house trying to help. Here we see the two story lines weave together; identifying the killer might provide some closure: "She knew that our father had walked into the cornfield possessed by something that was creeping into her now. She had wanted to bring back clues he could use as rungs to climb back to her on, to anchor him with facts, to ballast his sentences to Len [police detective]. Instead she saw herself falling after him into a bottomless pit." [p 176]. The third story line is Susie's coming to grip with her heaven and how she can move on. "I did begin to wonder what the word heaven meant.I thought, if this were heaven, truly heaven, it would be where my grandparents lived... 'You can have that,' Franny [Susie's heaven advisor] said to me. 'Plenty of people do.' 'How to you make the switch?'I asked. 'It's not as easy as you might think' she said. 'You have to stop desiring certain answers.' 'I don't get it.' 'If you stop asking why you were killed instead of someone else, stop investigating the vacuum left by your loss, stop wondering what everyone left on Earth is feeling.' she said, 'you can be free. Simply put, you have to give up on Earth.' This seemed impossible to me." [p 116] She slowly learns to let go but is still connected "I could trace how one thing - my death - connected these images to a single source. Now one could have predicted how my loss would change small moments on earth. But I held on to those moments, hoarded them. None of them were lost as long as I was watching." [p 226] This magnificent novel takes a horrific murder and shows the pain and grief it causes and the changes it has on her family and her friends. In the final part of the novel we see if she can pull away in order to let her family grow and move on, without forgetting. How can the family move on without real closure on Susie's death? And we finally see the meaning of the title "the lovely bones" pulls it all together. We also watch her killer move on through his life. Susie tells her story in simple declarative statements - like a 14 year old girl; it is wonderful how rich a story of relationships and desire can be told through this mechanism. The author, Alice Sebold, was a rape victim in college and wrote about it in her book "Lucky" - the title is the term the detective used to explain that the rape could have been worse, the rapist normally killed his victims. So obviously this story has that layer of truth behind it. Are these family relations really what it is like when a young child is killed? I don't know; it seams true, but I don't know. I know three families - good college friends all - who have lost a child. I see the hardship from the outside but can't really imagine the difficulty in their lives; I can't come close to understanding it. But because of Ms Sebold's experience I don't think this novel is gratuitous - I can imagine it could be true - not real (factual), but true. That is the highest praise fiction can receive.

I was hesitant to by this book after reading the mixed reviews, but after reading it, I'm glad I went ahead with it. I understand some of the negative reviews for this book as there a few things I thought didn't really make sense - or at least were not described well - but I cannot argue with the writing. Sebold's writing is beautiful and fluid and truly a work of art. The great things about this book: Sebold does an amazing job of switching between heaven and earth. I also love that this book is told from the point of the deceased. It makes for an unusual narrator. Sebold tells a story of grief, tragedy and loss in a very real manner. Most works of fiction would paint the family as coming together and leaning on each other for strength, but in times of tragedy that doesn't always happen. Many families are torn apart by tragedy while they try to deal with it on an individual level. In short, Sebold creates a very real-world story. If you have ever lost someone close to you, despite the sad subject of this book, I think it actually gives you hope. Having lost my father, I found comfort in the narrator talking about watching her family from heaven. Sebold also does an excellent job of weaving characters into the story that may seem initially like they don't belong. Ruth, a girl the narrator didn't really know in real life becomes an important part of the story, as does Hal, the brother of the little sisters boyfriend, who in most books would just be a character mentioned in passing. Basically, the book goes way beyond the typical story of it's type and really gets into the complexity of what happens when someone is lost to a tragedy. The parts that maybe were not so great (SPOILERS): The initial crime scene was well thought out, but I kept wondering how the police never found it. If it was a hole as intricate as described, how was Mr. Harvey able to cover it up so easy? And how was he able to build it unnoticed in the first place? No one saw him out there? It would have taken a long time to make a hole that intricate. That part seemed a little to far fetched. The elbow - Mr. Harvey builds an elaborate underground mud bunker in the middle of a corn field in order to commit a murder, then he does an even better job of completely destroying any trace of it after the fact, yet he is so careless when disposing of the body he drops the girls arm and doesn't notice? That also seemed not to fit well with the rest of the story. The idea of the deceased being a narrator was one thing, but the part where Ruth and Susie change bodies for a while takes that part of the book for into the science fiction realm for me. I can believe in the deceased being in heaven as souls and being able to see the living, but changing bodies one day seems a bit far fetched. The scene in which this happens was beautifully written and sad, but it seems to sci-fi for my taste. The ending was not initially what I wanted, and I think most readers would agree. I think most wanted her actual body to be found and Mr. Harvey to face justice, but in the end, I actually came to not mind the ending. I think it was more of a message and a way to make people think and left a more lasting impression than if the story had been tied up in a neat little package. Afterall, there isn't always justice and the missing aren't always found. This book did away with the story book ending and I actually liked that.

Bought for my daughter and she loves the book

I live in the UK and received this book as a birthday present from my sister-in-law in Cincinnati. Not one I would have chosen for myself (and indeed it hasn't been released here yet), but having started, I needed to finish. I read it in just over 24hrs - it's easy to read and interesting/challenging/well written enough to have you turning the pages quite quickly. Here comes the 'but'... I felt left unsatisfied, wanting to understand a little bit more from each chapter and character. I can't tell whether the Author deliberately leaves us wondering: because neither Susie, nor her family and friends have all of the pieces to fit together; or whether the author didn't have the imagination to develop the characters further and in their own right. So, it's either a very clever portrayal of how bitty and unresolved our lives can be when such a tragic event takes place, or the Author isn't experienced enough in developing sympathetic and fully rounded characters. I'm inclined to believe the latter since the last few episodes take on an aura of soap-like nonsense - things are resolved - but not quite, and not in the way we'd expect - For example, Susie's occupation of her class-mate's body was a) not what I expected, and b) not used for the purposes I would have expected. Incidentally, reading the book took on a certain poignancy as, as I was reading the last few pages, news of the disappearance of two little 10 year old girls broke. A week later they still haven't been found and I am struck by comparisons of policing methods employed here/now and in the book. Were police officers really so lax in the 70's or were we all just more naive? The book is very well written and the Author certainly has a talent for using words. There are some inconsistencies, however, in particular in the tone and vocabulary used by Susie. At times she is a naive teenager, at others an articulate adult. On reflection, I can't help but wonder at the extent to which this novel is really a form of autobiographical catharsis. In summary, it is certainly an 'experience' but it is not a book to put towards the top of a summer reading list.

Well, this book obviously has nothing to do with The Road by Carma McCarthy so I'll just get that comparison out of the way from the start. It is not a story of the love between father and son or mother and daughter. It is a love that lives on when the person is permanently removed. It is about those whose love will undergo changes but will never change. Ms. Sebold is a gifted story teller indeed. She uses the victim as the narrator but unlike other books suffering this plot line, where the victim holds revenge or anger, Susie Salmon does neither. The plot is pretty typical by now, victim was chosen by a serial killer that has a perchance for rape and violence but presents to the world as a humble and simple man. *Yawn*. But when Ms. Sebold set it to pen and paper it took on a remarkable change. Much of it was more believable to me and that made it a book that I will read again, just like The Road or Daisy Fae and Magic Man. I am well aware of the changes that occur within a family when an act of violence is visited upon a child. My sister was violently raped at 13 in 1979 in a small city. Up until that time, life was normal for us. Although she wasn't killed at the time of violent rape she took her own life 8 years later. It seemed that during those 8 years we were waiting the violence that had been done to her to end, like holding our breaths and hoping find a way out as a family so we could resume our lives. After her death the family's fate was sealed. Every single experience refers back to the event that ended up defining my sister: a life that in truth ended at 13. Perhaps my personal history is the reason that I've become intolerant of plot lines by naive but sensationalist writers. I undertook this book with much reservation expecting much of the same bunch of baloney. I found instead an author with perception and depth. In this book the character who are affected directly by Susie's death all take on the different tiers of mourning. Her father, Jack, exhibits the personal reflection of failure to protect or to have been able to have foreseen the events in time to have changed the death event. Her mother, Abigail, is denying the event and she is running so fast that she cuts all ties. Her sister, Lindsey, is stepping into her sister's shoes until she realizes she has become herself and she can manage to move forward. Her brother, Buckley, is the anger stage; the refusal to acknowledge the finality of death and the changes it brings. Her first and only budding romance, Ray Singh, represents the 'if only' phase. Her Grandma Lynn is the accepting phase. While Ray Singh's mother, Ruana Singh is the revenge phase. And Ruth Connors, the girl who is haunted by Susie in the storyline, give voice to the underlying memories that those of us carry ever second of the day after the violent deed has changed our lives forever. She is the lasting and living proof that a violent act ripples through society endlessly even when we by standers are unaware of the act. I was grateful that Ms. Sebold didn't set out to redeem the perpetrator's, George Harvey's motivations and actions, although at times I was fearful the story line was falling that way. Rather she simply told the story-history in glimpses and left George's motivations and actions unexplored. I also applauded that every character was flawed and their redemption was held within their flaws. This book was well written, engaging, and memorable. I will be following this author's future progress.

Note: spoilers I have read through this novel more than once, and I can say it grows stronger each time. Millions of copies, a year and a half on the bestseller lists, and almost two thousand Amazon reviews later, The Lovely Bones keeps on going. What is it about this novel that has touched so many of us at this particular point in time? The aftermath of 9/11 has been put forth as one explanation, but while that might get a lot of people to open the book, it didn't get them to finish it. Susie Salmon is but the latest incarnation of a familiar figure in American literature - the youth who never gets sullied by having to grow up, somewhat like Holden Caulfield or Sylvia Plath. The unique twist here is that she gets to watch everyone else grow up and comment on that ... growing up in her own way, as she admits at the end of the book, reaching a final peace with herself on Earth as an absence others must bridge, becoming wise in a way that cannot be measured in years. As the New York Times admitted in its review, most readers would probably pass, sight unseen, on a first novel in which a 14-year-old murder victim watches her family from heaven. But Sebold almost makes it work for the whole 300+ pages. The only part that doesn't is the "Lazarus" scene with Ruth near the end. On its own terms, it works fine, but as even Sebold seems to realize it sort of violates the rules of contact between heaven and earth she's established throughout the novel ... everything else seems plausible, assuming of course that you believe in life after death, but then if the dead can not only briefly return to the world but inhabit the bodies of living in order to fulfill unrealized sexual agendas among other things (and let me say that Susie's decision to do that instead of finger Mr. Harvey and pass on where her body is buried actually does seem understandable), why doesn't this happen more often in the real world? Huh? That said, there's much to admire. It was deft to make this not the story of Susie's life told in flashback from beyond the grave a la Sunset Boulevard, or an accidental removal from life a la Here Comes Mr.Jordan/Heaven Can Wait/that Chris Rock version, but to make Susie's death and ascent to heaven the beginning of the story. I don't find Susie's heaven as insipid as some of the other reviewers seem to; isn't it supposed to be the point that a) it appeals primarily to Susie and b) it's, as in Heaven Can Wait, Defending your Life and other such narratives, but a prelude to the real, wider Heaven that Susie has moved on to at the end of the story? In fact, having grown up in a couple of leafy Northeastern suburbs myself I can say I know exactly where she's coming from. As the radiator woman sang in "Eraserhead," "in heaven, everything's fine ... you get yours and I get mine." The rereadings I mentioned above helped close a couple of plot holes that seem to have boggled other people here: how the police link Mr. Harvey to Susie (the fingerprints on the Coke bottle ... his they could have matched with the ones in the house; hers from her birth certificate). I don't think the police as depicted here were necessarily incompetent, just outfoxed by a serial killer with more practice committing the crimes. It also comes out as you reread just how subtly Sebold charts the changes in Susie, the way her tone moves from impatient teenager to beatific spirit over the course of the narrative, alternating those perspectives constantly as Susie recalls them from her present vantage point somewhere in the blue distance. I like how she creates a sense of omniscience by having Susie often refer in passing to the resolution of certain plot threads that otherwise haven't happened at that point in the story. This could have just been a puerile attempt to work through her rape experience and deal with her very real fear of death during that; instead she actually managed to write a novel that, in the end, works because all of us have someone we remember in our lives who never got to truly live into adulthood and/or maturity, who remains safely forever young, trapped, like the penguin in the epigraph, in a perfect world, beyond the touch of earthly years, and we'd like to know, just once, how they're doing there. Surprising that we haven't heard any word on the movie yet other than that Scotswoman supposedly working on the script. There's a lot here that could make a really great film in this particular genre ... let's hope they don't screw it up.

I can’t believe I am actually saying this, but this is the first time I have actually preferred a movie over a book. The book was a little different from the movie which I had fallen in love with a while ago. I feel like the movie version encapsulated my feelings and emotions more than the book simply because every scene in the movie was so beautiful and moving. It’s not that I don’t like the book as I gave it 4 stars, it was just different. I feel Ike there were times when it went on and on and on and I just wanted to get to the part that Susie has a moment back on earth and that scumbag douchebag, Mr. Harvey, was taken out. This book that turned to a movie will forever be one of my favorites and I will hold it close to my heart. It’s heartbreak and so beautiful at the same time.

I had watched The Lovely Bones movie years ago and since then, it’s been one of my favorites. This was actually the first book I’ve read in over 10 years! SO MUCH more happened in this book than in the movie! I’m very glad i decided to buy a kindle to help make a “bridge” to encourage myself to start reading again, it worked. I’m hopeful that in the future i’ll read much more. I really loved the book fully, however some parts of the book are worded strangely and had to reread it a few times to actually comprehend it. Some sentences are jam packed with strange words i didn’t know the meanings and had to look up each of the definitions. The only part i didn’t quite understand was near the end, when Ray literally “sees” Susie in Ruth, i found it odd how quickly he was convinced it was actually her, as Ray hadn’t ever had a “supernatural” experience before, like how Ruth had seen Susie running past her on the day she died. I feel like it would’ve been something he wouldn’t believe right away n felt like it was a way to rush up the ending of the book. But the book did still end in a respectful, timely manner after all, so no biggie! Would recommend this book to anyone, as it offers a perspective most people don’t see or think about!

Estoy súper contenta d e haber hecho caso a las recomendaciones acerca de este libro. Me ha. Encantado la manera en la que está escrito más que nada. Es un libro muy interesante y a la vez desgarrador. Siendo una persona de lagrima fácil he llorado con cada pagina imaginándome en la situación de cada uno de los personajes. ♥️♥️ Gracias a Alice sebold por esta increíble historia

Good quality

Excellent

The Lovely Bones feels like a quiet, aching fable about love, loss, and the invisible threads that keep us connected even after death. Watching Susie observe her family from heaven was both beautiful and heartbreaking — like she was still living beside them in her own gentle way. This book made me laugh, cry, and feel everything in between. Ruth was my favorite character; her quiet belief in Susie felt so tender and hopeful. A haunting, emotional, and beautifully written story.

História pesada mas muito boa.