Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

[Scheherazade]

This is one of my "spur of the moment" picks from the library. I did not know what to expect but Alice Sebold lets you know what the book is about from the very first sentence:

'My name was Salmon, like the fish, first name, Susie I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer.'

Susie is raped and murdered brutally by a serial killer who lives on their street when she is only 14. Her body is never discovered, which makes it very difficult for her family to come to terms with her loss and the novel tells their survival struggle.

What makes the story interesting is the fact that Susie, who watches the Earth closely from Heaven, is the narrator. She not only tells us what her family is going through but also how she comes to terms with her own death at such a young age.

It cannot be denied that Lovely Bones is a page-turner one finds it hard to put down; however, there are parts of the story that are lacking or predictable. Still it would make a good travel book or something to take your mind off "life".

6/10 KitKats!

[prendrelemick]

Read it last year. Liked it well enough.

Even though Susie is dead, it is the story of her coming of age while she looks down on her family from her personal "heaven". In fact her death seems to affect her the least.
It is her family and their struggle to cope in the aftermath of the murder that provides the tension and drama of the story.
There are the usual "standard Characters" we seem to meet everywhere in literature these days. ( Is there a wife and mother who doesn't regret her life choice?) But on the whole it is a well written and enjoyable read.

[Dark Muse]

The book starts out with a very intriguing concept in the portrayal of a young girl telling the tale of her own murder, and watching those she left behind deal with her death on earth. Sebold handles the real life elements of grief rather well in the way each individual handles the death of Susie Salmon in their own way. The way in which people are both pulled apart and brought together by the tragedy.

As a person with a fascination with alternative realities the construct of heaven within the book is also quite an interesting feature of the story. There were some original and provocative ideas relating to the after life which unfold within the book and some rather beautiful visual scenes.

The book should also be given credit for the beautiful poetic prose work which it caries throughout. Some of the lines are quite stunning and captivating and when I first began to read I found myself engaged within the story and pleasantly surprised.

But for all that, somewhere within the middle the book begins to falter and does not live up to the full potential which it presents within the beginning of the story. After a while the story takes on the feeling of starting to drag on and leaves the reader forever waiting with the feeling that something is going to "happen" something big or unexpected is just waiting around the corner, and yet it never comes.

As the story progresses it begins to flat line at a point, in which after a while it becomes wearisome moving back and forth between Susie and her watching her family carry on through their daily lives. It gives the impression that the author is making a promise which she cannot deliver. It ultimately ends in an anticlimactic fizzle.

The end of the story leaves something to be desired and I think was quite ruined by that tacking on of a rather unnecessary epilogue which did not enhance the reading, but rather left the reader with a feeling of confusion.

While the ideas relating to the afterlife, and the construct of heaven are initially interesting, the last pages of the book seems almost to be almost contradictory and leaves the impression that Sebold had not completely flushed her ideas in relation to heaven, and was not completely sure herself exactly what sort of vision of the after life she wanted to give.

The last chapter of the book ends in a way that could have been very powerful and perhaps helped salvage some of the earlier portions of the book, but the addition of the epilogue feels insecure as if like Susie, Sebold herself is not ready to completely "let go"

In an odd way, this last effort at what seems like an attempt to bring closure ends up having the very opposite effect.

[prendrelemick]

SLIGHT SPOILER.

Thats more or less the impression I got- a good idea book that didn't quite deliver. I was annoyed that Suzy/Sebold thought that having a shag (in someone else's body) was the final step to maturity and being able to quit the earth. Spoiled the whole thing.

[Dark Muse]

That part did not acutally bother me as much as it seems to a lot of other people. But I thought that the book would have been better off it ended with that last line (don't want to give it away) at the end of the last chapter. It would have been much more powerful to have stopped with that, than go onto that somewhat cliched and corny epilogue which also seemed to take away from the idea of Suzy finally moving on.

[prendrelemick]

I see what you mean (having just sneaked a look) some of those closing paragraphs were of interest though, like mr Harvey's demise, but they would've been better woven in to the story.- then the end would have been the end.

ANOTHER SPOILER

I didn't mind the sex either it was beautifully written and tasteful. It was the scenario that rankled. Suzi is given one unique chance to live again for a few hours. What does she do with it -she sleeps with Ray. I mean is that it? Does sex mean the difference between the mature and immature suzi? Is that all she was hanging round for?

That was the moment where Sebold fell short for me. It was almost gratuitous

[Dark Muse]

I see what you mean (having just sneaked a look) some of those closing paragraphs were of interest though, like mr Harvey's demise, but they would've been better woven in to the story.- then the end would have been the end.

ANOTHER SPOILER

I didn't mind the sex either it was beautifully written and tasteful. It was the scenario that rankled. Suzi is given one unique chance to live again for a few hours. What does she do with it -she sleeps with Ray. I mean is that it? Does sex mean the difference between the mature and immature suzi? Is that all she was hanging round for?

That was the moment where Sebold fell short for me. It was almost gratuitous


That way I saw the sex scene was a moment of things coming full circle which is what gave Suzie the feeling of completion which is what allowed her to move one. It was not just about sex for me. But the fact that she was ripped out of the world violently, and robbed of her life, by a brutal act of sex. And so the thing which untimatly can set her free is an act of love.