Product Description

This deluxe trade paperback edition of Alice Sebold's modern classic features French flaps and rough-cut pages.

Once in a generation a novel comes along that taps a vein of universal human experience, resonating with readers of all ages. The Lovely Bones is such a book - a phenomenal #1 bestseller celebrated at once for its narrative artistry, its luminous clarity of emotion, and its astoniishing power to lay claim to the hearts of millions of readers around the world.

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."

     So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on eath continue without her - her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling.

     Out of unspeakable traged and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy

"A stunning achievement." -The New Yorker

"Deeply affecting. . . . A keenly observed portrait of familial love and how it endures and changes over time." -New York Times

"A triumphant novel. . . . It's a knockout." -Time

"Destined to become a classic in the vein of To Kill a Mockingbird. . . . I loved it." -Anna Quindlen

"A novel that is painfully fine and accomplished." -Los Angeles Times

"The Lovely Bones seems to be saying there are more important things in life on earth than retribution. Like forgiveness, like love." -Chicago Tribune 

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3733 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780316001823
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey.

Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams," where "there were no teachers.... We never had to go inside except for art class.... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue."

The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years like an episode of My So-Called Afterlife. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on Earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow." Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish, and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings. --Brad Thomas Parsons

Look Inside the Motion Picture The Lovely Bones (Paramount, 2010)
(Click on each image below to see a larger view)

Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon

Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon

Mark Wahlberg as Jack Salmon

Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon and Director Peter Jackson

From Publishers Weekly
Sebold's first novel after her memoir, Lucky is a small but far from minor miracle. Sebold has taken a grim, media-exploited subject and fashioned from it a story that is both tragic and full of light and grace. The novel begins swiftly. In the second sentence, Sebold's narrator, Susie Salmon, announces, "I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." Susie is taking a shortcut through a cornfield when a neighbor lures her to his hideaway. The description of the crime is chilling, but never vulgar, and Sebold maintains this delicate balance between homely and horrid as she depicts the progress of grief for Susie's family and friends. She captures the odd alliances forged and the relationships ruined: the shattered father who buries his sadness trying to gather evidence, the mother who escapes "her ruined heart, in merciful adultery." At the same time, Sebold brings to life an entire suburban community, from the mortician's son to the handsome biker dropout who quietly helps investigate Susie's murder. Much as this novel is about "the lovely bones" growing around Susie's absence, it is also full of suspense and written in lithe, resilient prose that by itself delights. Sebold's most dazzling stroke, among many bold ones, is to narrate the story from Susie's heaven (a place where wishing is having), providing the warmth of a first-person narration and the freedom of an omniscient one. It might be this that gives Sebold's novel its special flavor, for in Susie's every observation and memory of the smell of skunk or the touch of spider webs is the reminder that life is sweet and funny and surprising.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-"I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973," says Susie Salmon in this intriguing novel. Teens will immediately be drawn into this account of a girl who was raped and killed, and tells her story from "heaven." She realizes gradually that she is in an interim heaven until she can let go of her earthly concerns. The place is like school with Seventeen for a textbook and no teachers. On Earth, her mother needs to leave the family for a time, her sister seems to have Susie constantly in her thoughts, her young brother grows into a pensive preteen, and her grief-stricken father spends much of his time seeking out the murderer, even after it seems that the police have given up. The narrator observes the disparate ways her family and friends cope, and finally sees that they are resolving their grief as "the lovely bones" of their lives knit themselves around the empty space that was her life. While the subject matter is grim, the telling is light and frequently humorous-Susie remains 14 even though 8 years pass in the other characters' lives. This novel will encourage discussion. There is a slight feeling of magical realism, but there is grounding in real adolescence.
Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Customer Reviews

An intriguing debut - and an excellent read
Alice Sebold has written a remarkable debut novel. The narrator, Susie Salmon, was raped and murdered in 1973 and now resides in her heaven; yet, her voice contains none of the bitterness one would expect. She is able to see into the lives of those who touched her in life and death. At times wistful - for she will never be able to experience growing up - and others matter-of-fact, Susie witnesses the changes and growth within her family and small circle of friends. Her story is not one about death, but about loss and affirming life in its face, about moving on not only for those she left behind but for herself. The reader won't be able to escape the sadness in these pages - I came close to crying several times - but the overall tone is hardly grim. Because Susie is secure and happy in her heaven, she keeps the story full of light and optimism.

This novel is not flawless, nor should it expected to be. The narrative loses some of its momentum near the end. In addition, Sebold makes the mistake of adding a scene (which I won't describe here) seemingly designed to lessen the reader's regret about Susie's missed coming-of-age, but instead the scene falls flat. Susie's loss is as much a part of this book as her family's is, and to pretend it can be reversed, even if only temporarily, defeats the story. Still, given the first two-thirds of the book, this misstep and others can be forgiven.

The Lovely Bones is one of those books you can pick up and not want to put down again until you finish. At roughly 325 pages, this novel demands to be read on a plane, or on the beach, or when you have good chunks of time available to sit with it. Don't frustrate yourself by allowing a half hour here and there.

This is one book that deserves its spot on the bestseller list.

Almost too close for comfort
Less than 2 years ago, our 13-year-old son Daniel died - very unexpectedly, of a massive asthma attack while on a school retreat. I purchased "The Lovely Bones", knowing the book's premise, for our 17-year old daughter to read. Not sure if the content of the book would be too close to our actual experience for Julia to handle, I decided to read it first (this is the first time I have done any pre-reading, as Julia is perfectly able to decide on her own whether or not to read a book, but still. . . ). I was very surprised to find myself riveted to the book, and unable to stop reading it until finished. While I, like many earlier reviewers, found the end a little too contrived, I certainly feel that the book's strengths far outweigh its weaknesses.
About 6 months after Daniel's death, I had a dream that portrayed a visit by my husband, daughter, and myself to Daniel in what was clearly "his heaven" - also containing a school in a residential neighborhood, a "foster family" which apparently served as his "home away from home", and - most positively - a large number of new friends. This was the best aspect of his Heaven, as far as I was concerned, as Daniel had been troubled for his entire life by an inability to make many friends, and here he was almost too busy to visit with his family because of wanting to get on with his activities with his buddies!
I have often offered the circumstances of Daniel's death - fast and probably painless (as a friend remarked, "Daniel doesn't know he's dead yet"), and that he was able to donate many of his organs - as probable explanations to those who find me so "upbeat" since he died. I contrast this situation with other, well-publicized child kidnappings, murders, and (worst, in my opinion) those events which are never resolved.
Nonetheless - some aspects of the narrative hit home, and I found myself tearing up more over this fictional account than our own all-too-real loss! I was forced to wonder what would Daniel think if he is able to follow our lives, as Susie followed those of her family and friends. Does he still pine for the girl he had a crush on? Is he sorry that he can't see the sequal to his beloved MIB movie? Is he able to eat his fill of cheese pizzas, now that he doesn't have to take at least one bite of his mother's sometimes too-exotic vegetarian experiments? Does he find it annoying that, after years of refusing to allow pets, we now have 3 crazy cats, as a result of Julia "needing" them? Is he bemused by the grief-stricken responses to his death by those same classmates he had sought as friends for so many years?
I am awaiting Julia's response to the book. In particular, I want to know how "genuine" the characterizations of Susie and Lindsay appear to her. I will suggest that she submit a review herself, so we will all know the answer.

Lovely literature
Reviewed by Tammy Petty Conrad for Reader Views (11/07)

This is one of those books I knew I should have already read. Everyone had been talking about it. I knew it would be a good read and worth the time, but somehow it hadn't made it to the top of my pile on the nightstand. Besides, who wants to read about a fourteen-year-old girl being raped and murdered? As a mother of a teenager, it was a topic I wanted to avoid.

But from the beginning of the story I was mesmerized. The victim, Susie Salmon, like the fish, as the author says, tells the story beginning with her brutal demise and carries on throughout the years watching her family, friends and strangers from her version of heaven. She becomes the proverbial "fly on the wall" and shares all that she sees. In the beginning we eavesdrop on the mind of a child as she becomes aware of the danger she is in and that she won't be surviving. As a parent, it is not easy to read, but the scene is so well written that you will continue to turn the pages even as your stomach turns.

Sebold creates a new version of heaven with roommates and different sections to live in. We learn that it is not a perfect place giving us all that we desire. It really made me think about what it might be like and whether members of my own family were above watching me as I stroll through my own story.

The villain, Mr. Harvey, is known from the beginning of the story. Susie not only follows her family from above, but she follows her killer's movements. It felt like being in the mind of a pedophile watching the deliberateness of his actions and the incredible patience he displayed as he waited, sometimes for years, for his next victim. He was truly the man down the street that nobody suspected expect the father overwhelmed with grief. Shivers raced up my spine when I read "He had killed animals, taking lesser lives to keep from killing a child."

As we might expect, the family takes Susie's death very hard. The gift of this novel is that it shares how each member of the family reacts and internalizes this horrible event. No one is the same and as we might imagine, the death of a child is not the end of tragedy for the Salmons.

Even school friends and their reactions are woven into the plot line. Ruth, a mere acquaintance takes on a major role as the story develops. There is the Indian boy, Ray, who is at first accused of the crime and his mother, Runa Singh, whose lives become intermingled in the Salmon's as the book develops. She is almost as interesting as the saucy, often soused, grandma who becomes the glue of the family.

The writer's style is simple and yet eloquent. She delves into Susie's desire and attainment of her first kiss. Prior to her death, that was the only sexual experience Susie had had. She goes on to watch the interactions between those left behind and even in death she is able to blossom into a woman in an amazing scene that I won't reveal. The author explains the urges of one character as "...a desire beyond the sweetness and attention, it fed a longing, beginning to flower green and yellow into a crocus-like lust, the soft petals opening into her awkward adolescence."

Not only do we learn how interdependent people are, but we also learn that usually people can overcome most anything. It doesn't happen easily or even the way we might expect. But it happens, over time. And just as Susie learns in "The Lovely Bones," we too understand that connections with others can be miraculous.