Product Description

When we first meet Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. As she looks down from this strange new place, she tells us, in the fresh and spirited voice of a fourteen-year-old girl, a tale that is both haunting and full of hope. In the weeks following her death, Susie watches life on Earth continuing without her-her school friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her family holding out hope that she'll be found, her killer trying to cover his tracks. As months pass without leads, Susie sees her parents' marriage being contorted by loss, her sister hardening herself in an effort to stay strong, and her little brother trying to grasp the meaning of the word gone. And she explores the place called heaven. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. There are counselors to help newcomers adjust and friends to room with. Everything she ever wanted appears as soon as she thinks of it-except the thing she most wants: to be back with the people she loved on Earth. With compassion, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie sees her loved ones pass through grief and begin to mend. Her father embarks on a risky quest to ensnare her killer. Her sister undertakes a feat of remarkable daring. And the boy Susie cared for moves on, only to find himself at the center of a miraculous event. The Lovely Bones is luminous and astonishing, a novel that builds out of grief the most hopeful of stories. In the hands of a brilliant new writer, this story of the worst thing a family can face is transformed into a suspenseful and even funny novel about love, memory, joy, heaven, and healing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62232 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

About the Author
Alice Sebold is the bestselling author ofThe Lovely BonesandLucky, A Memoir.She lives in California with her husband, the novelist Glen David Gold.

Customer Reviews

Those bones
They say that a ghost remains tied to the world of the living either to avenge its death or to comfort those left behind. The heroine of Alice Sebold's haunting, sweet novel "The Lovely Bones" isn't out for revenge, but her ties to the living family and friends make debut an amazing, uplifting story.

Susie Salmon is dead. On a day like any other, she was raped and brutally murdered by a seemingly harmless neighbor, who hacked up her body and buried it. Now she exists in a surprisingly simple and pleasant heaven, watching her family and friends after she vanished, and watching their lives unfold even after hers has ended.

Her parents cling to hope that even though a lot of blood and part of an arm has been found, that Susie is still alive. But eventually, they must give up hope. Susie watches the police investigate her death, while her father pokes around to find out whodunnit. And just as importantly her family and friends stumble through the various stages of grief, trying to deal with a horrible, senseless crime that has touched each of them.

When someone is kidnapped and/or murdered, the news usually focuses on the criminals and the gory details. Not much attention is given to the victims and the lives they once led, or how their loves ones are dealing with the tragedy. Other books would be self-conscious or miserable dealing with that kind of story, but "Lovely Bones" is something very different.

Instead, this book possesses a quiet, comforting tone and a poetic style, which sometimes gets bogged in its own detail, but is beautiful nonetheless. Sebold's writing has an innocent charm; one enchanting scene has Susie trying to make a flower bloom for her father, and filling a celestial room with flower petals instead.

The only really gritty scene is the rape-and-murder, which is all the more shocking when you realize that things like this happen in real life. And Sebold paints the characters' grief and shock with a light hand, so that it never feels sentimental. It has the hollow ache of real grief, transcribed with more skill than more authors can manage.

Susie herself is a truly unique character, a narrator completely removed from the events she describes, and yet so wrapped up in the people she loves, and has left behind. And Sebold explores the many characters as they go through the grieving process, with different thoughts and actions as they try to deal with it. The parents, the siblings, the teachers, and even the kid who was enamored of Susie.

Alice Sebold's "Lovely Bones" shocks you at the beginning, and spends the rest of the book drying your tears. Beautiful, enchanting, disturbing and very unique.

The moving story of a family forever changed, forever sorrowful...
One word adequately describes this amazing book: family. But we are not talking about the kind of family depicted in 1950's television shows or Norman Rockwell portraits. The Salmon family ("like the fish") in The Lovely Bones is authentic in every way: the mother feels trapped by her servile role as nurturer and housecleaner in suburban America in the late 1970s; the father is bored with his office job and lives for his evenings at home when he plays with his young son in the back yard or makes model ships in his study. The adolescent sister, Lindsey, is wrapped up in high school sports and her boyfriend. However, the Salmon family has a heavy cross to carry. Each member is trying to cope with an impossible situation- how to grieve the tragic death of a 14-year old daughter and sister, Susie.

It is the narrative voice that makes this novel so exquisitely beautiful and haunting. From her position in Heaven, the murdered family member, Susie, tells the story of her death at the hands of a serial killer, an eccentric neighbor who even the police do not suspect as the perpetrator. Susie observes her family's ongoing grief in the months and years following her death. As a spirit, she is able to crawl under the skin of her family members and actually feel their hidden thoughts and pain. She watches as her father mentally breaks down because he instinctively knows that his odd neighbor, Mr. Harvey, committed the crime and no one, including his wife and the local police, are willing to believe him due to lack of evidence. Susie sees how her mother emotionally closes up following the murder and attempts to dull the pain through adultery and eventual flight to California. She grows to respect her adolescent sister's noble strength as she watches her comfort her father and become a mother to their abandoned young brother.

Susie is not really in Heaven yet. She is in an in between place where souls apparently seek refuge after sudden and violent deaths. In this case, Susie is in a peaceful but lonely realm full of dogs, gazebos, and other young girls. She is still partly bound to earth and to her family. The chords that draw her to her parents and siblings are strong, and she is not yet willing to sever them. Her family is not willing to let go of her, either.

I cannot think of any book that I have ever read that tugged at my heart in this way, causing it to strain with sadness for the plight of the characters. As I read, my thoughts would wander to families that I have known or heard about who lost a child, perhaps through terminal illness or a tragic car accident. It is a lifelong trauma that leaves each family member forever changed, forever sorrowful.

Word has it that Peter Jackson, the brilliant director of Lord of the Rings, will be making this movie for Dream Works. Better bring a box of Kleenex to the theatre.

Found myself rolling my eyes often
There were many places in this book where I found myself rolling my eyes and saying, "Oh, come on." The writing is serviceable but not literary. Almost every plot point could be anticipated. I suppose its premise is somewhat original, but rather than feeling much emotion while reading this book, I just wanted it to be over with. Having had a teen-age friend murdered, I thought I would feel something more: my point being, I SHOULD have, but the book just didn't rise to that level. I found it to be simplistic and, frankly, sappy.