Rating: 2.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The Lovely Bones is the story of a family devastated by a gruesome murder -- a murder recounted by the teenage victim. Upsetting, you say? Remarkably, first-time novelist Alice Sebold takes this difficult material and delivers a compelling and accomplished exploration of a fractured family's need for peace and closure.

The details of the crime are laid out in the first few pages: from her vantage point in heaven, Susie Salmon describes how she was confronted by the murderer one December afternoon on her way home from school. Lured into an underground hiding place, she was raped and killed. But what the reader knows, her family does not. Anxiously, we keep vigil with Susie, aching for her grieving family, desperate for the killer to be found and punished.

Sebold creates a heaven that's calm and comforting, a place whose residents can have whatever they enjoyed when they were alive -- and then some. But Susie isn't ready to release her hold on life just yet, and she intensely watches her family and friends as they struggle to cope with a reality in which she is no longer a part. To her great credit, Sebold has shaped one of the most loving and sympathetic fathers in contemporary literature.

My Review: Susie Salmon is dead. She knows she's dead, and she's even indoctrinated into the rules of the Afterlife by Franny, her spirit guide: Heaven can be whatever you want it to be. What Susie wants is to be part of the life she's supposed to leave behind.

Susie was murdered. And she doesn't want her killer to go unpunished.

Susie watches as her killer kills again, and again, and her father—resolutely pursuing leads the police have dismissed, with the help of Susie's sister Lindsay—gets closer and closer to solving the heinous crime of child-murder.

Susie, who can never grow up since she's dead, comes to terms with her afterlife, although she can't really get with the program about adulthood. Her mother mires herself in the horrendous cloud of mourning and grief that follows the death of your child. Her friends move on, sort of, though she sees how her death has changed their lives. Susie ends her surveillance and moves on to...

...who knows what.

And here is the problem that I have with the book. What was the point of this framing device? What, in the end, is served by poor little Susie leading us all a merry chase and we voyeuristically move inside the lives of her nearest and dearest? At the end of the day, the point of the book has got to be about Susie, or her presence is contrived at best and prurient at worst.

I read this on a vacation to DC many years ago. I wasn't sure why I was so dyspeptic about the read then, and took quite some time to realize that I do NOT like being jerked around by unnecessary child-harm in stories. Okay, the point is the murder of a child, okay, okay: BUT then the child doesn't need to be part of the murder's solution! It smacks of abuse to me. Let the poor little thing rest.

Millions disagree with me here. I didn't like [Room] for the same reasons. It's just me, I guess.

This is easily the worst book I've ever read in my entire life.

SPOILER ALERT:
She comes back from heaven to bang the guy she liked.

If you like this book, then you hate literature. It's that simple. I'm not joking. Do not read this book.

A SANGUE FREDDO
Susie Salmon, salmone proprio come il pesce, ha 14 anni quando il vicino di casa, la sequestra, stupra e fa a pezzi.


Susie: Saorsie Ronan nel film omonimo di Peter Jackson, 2009.

Comincia subito così, questa storia horror che sa diventare molto altro: thriller, introspezione, tenerezza… per certi versi il più strano coming-of-age che abbia letto.
La perdita, l’assenza, il dolore diventano i temi più della detection, del giallo.


Il padre: Mark Wahlberg.

Perché a raccontare tutto è proprio la voce di Susie che da morta si tiene in qualche modo ancora vicina ai suoi familiari, li vede cadere a pezzi, il padre che non si arrende alla mancanza di un colpevole, la madre che invece si allontana, la sorella minore che si sente investita della improvvisa responsabilità di figlia maggiore, il fratellino che reagisce in altra maniera.
Man mano anche Susan si allontana, via via la sua presenza sulla parte della Terra che spetta a quelli come lei, i morti, si fa più labile, inizia un viaggio per una terra lontana.


La madre: Rachel Weisz.

Susie è fragile e meravigliosa come i velieri che suo padre costruisce: e come loro, racchiusi in una bottiglia, Susan è intrappolata e impossibilitata a crescere, a svilupparsi.

La storia personale di Alice Sebold, quella che si desume dal suo romanzo precedente, l’esordio, Lucky, dona alla voce della vittima un’umanità e una consapevolezza speciali.


La nonna: Susan Sarandon.

C’è tanto in queste pagine: normalità e patologia, sogno e veglia, infanzia, adolescenza, età adulta, amore e separazione, paura commozione rabbia disperazione, tenerezza affetto sollievo consolazione, terra di confine, l’ora e il dopo, il qui e l’altrove,

Nella mente del serial killer? Nel cuore dell’orco?
No, nella mente e nel cuore della vittima: molto, ma molto più interessante.


L’assassino: Stanley Tucci.

Nella mente di un assassino ci siamo già stati, “A sangue freddo”, il romanzo di Truman Capote, c'è riuscito benissimo 36 anni prima - e poi altri c'hanno provato, chi c'è riuscito (pochi), non ha mai saputo raggiungere quella vetta. I più hanno fallito.
Qui, adesso, con Alice Sebold siamo dall'altra parte, nella vittima.
E immagino che ci vorranno altri 36 anni per riuscirci altrettanto bene.

i actually saw the film of this first before picking up the book and i am kicking myself for spoiling it all. there is so much more the book can convey that is lost on screen. a really great book overall!

n  4 starsn

My review disappeared ? Wow, I am surprised somebody would delete it based on my thoughts.
I remember I didn't like it, hated it. It wasn't the writing it was the realistic horror, sadness, and darkness it left in my heart. To live through her eyes, her dead eyes was too much. I don't like a book that makes me feeling sad, and broken. I didn't like it, I wished i hadn't read it it still darkens my mood when I think about it.

I just didn't enjoy it at all
It was very sad sure but the plot didn't make much sense at some points and generally speaking it wasn't enjoyable, like i can't even remember one single thing i liked about this book ...

(No rating)

Before reading The Lovely Bones, I read Lucky, the memoir in which Alice Sebold gives a graphic account of her rape, at age eighteen, and her eventual face-to-face meeting with her rapist in court. I read both books shortly after they were released. What’s prompting me to add this review now is that I just learned two things: Sebold has written a third book called The Almost Moon; and a movie based on The Lovely Bones is scheduled for release in December, 2009.

In The Lovely Bones fourteen year-old Susie Salmon is not only raped, but murdered; and she narrates the story from Heaven. Both books open with violent acts. The Almost Moon opens with, “When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.” One reviewer said that, in comparison, “The Lovely Bones is a cheerful walk in the park.” I’m afraid The Almost Moon goes to my “never-plan-to-read” list.

I love reading debut novels because nowadays so many of them are well-written. A “new voice” generally makes for a refreshing read. And I admit that at first I really enjoyed The Lovely Bones. I thought it was “different” and “bold”, especially the fact that the reader knows right at the beginning that the rapist/murderer is Mr. Harvey, a neighbour. Susie watches (from Heaven, remember?) Mr. Harvey, and her friends and family, and the impact her death has on their lives. She pays particular attention to Ray, the only boy she ever kissed, and to Ruth, who apparently can “feel” Susie.

About halfway through the story, the narrative seemed to lose momentum, but I continued to read. Then, near the end, Susie “inhabits” the body of Ruth, so that she can have sex with Ray. Ruth, a lesbian, has no idea what happened until afterwards, when Ray tells her. And Ray, of course, doesn’t know that it wasn’t really Ruth that he had sex with. It is here that I must seriously question Alice Sebold’s motive in writing this novel. Is this emotional revenge, disguised as fiction? How can it be seen as any kind of resolution to have her character use a friend’s body to rape a young man? Or in doing so, to have him, effectively, rape her obviously non-consenting friend? And from Heaven?

The title for Lucky was evidently in reference to the police later telling Sebold that she was “lucky”, because she was “only” raped, while the previous victim, in the same spot, had been raped, then murdered, then dismembered. I applaud Alice Sebold for writing Lucky; it cannot have been easy for her to write the memoir – in fact it wasn’t published until a further eighteen years of her life had passed. But I cannot applaud The Lovely Bones.

Obviously, many readers disagree; rave reviews abound. This novel has been a huge success for Alice Sebold: it won numerous awards, and now there’s a movie. Like her third book, I think I’ll give that movie a miss.

This was the book that made me realise the serious flaw in the theory that if lots of people you see on the tube are reading a book, it must be good. I would say with some confidence that this is the worst book I've ever read in my entire life.

The only thing that kept me going to the end was sheer bloody-mindedness; a determination not to be defeated by any book no matter how brain-deflatingly awful it is. That said, the endless cloying sentimentality in this almost made me throw it in the bin on several occasions, and it contains the single worst simile I've ever encountered in an entire lifetime of book-reading.

Two-dimensional stereotyped characters
-Mother – living with the regret of losing her independence to the demands of childrearing. The tragic loss of a daughter accelerates her departure from those heavy burdens and into the arms of the detective working the case.
-Father – obsessed to the point that he neglects the living members of his family destroying his relationship with his wife. Only in her absence is he able to fall in love with her “all over again”.
-Detective – his ‘sob-story’ past (wife committed suicide) explains his devotion to make sense of senseless death by solving cases of murdered women. This leads him into the arms of the latest victim’s mother (who, incidentally, reminds him of his dead wife - eww).
-Mrs. Singh – the exotic, wise, independent, and strong foreigner who calmly dispenses cool sage-like personal advice to near-strangers.
-George Harvey – the ‘odd-but-harmless neighbor’ otherwise know as the psychotic pedophile/murderer who builds dollhouses in his spare time. Queue soundtrack with mangled version of a nursery rhyme transposed to a minor key ungainly lobbed from a detuned piano. Snippets from his mildly troubling childhood are revealed…explaining nothing.
-Grandma Lynn – the often drunk but all-knowing grandmother with a ‘wacky’ liberal perspective on life.
-I could go on…the youngest sibling who sees the ghost of Susie as his imaginary friend, the sister who struggles to become her own person from under the shadow of her dead sister, her boyfriend as the complete antithesis to the evil Mr. Harvey, her boyfriend’s older brother as the macho gear-head with a heart of gold.

The Narrative
There is only the occasional passage where the narrator’s voice sounds like that a teenage girl from the mid-seventies (“Lindsay had a boy in the kitchen!” – oh the giddiness of it all!). Small blessings. Cliché after cliché. If you haven’t already gotten a sense of the hackneyed construction of this book please re-read the first page of this rant. Only a sportscaster from some small-town cable station would stand a fighting chance of besting Sebold in a contest of cliché slinging.

The Ending
Worthy of Hallmark. Every loose end is tied up with nobody owning up to the consequences of their actions (with the exception of Mr. Harvey, because he’s bad, you see). The family is reunited, the murderer is murdered, the daughter marries her high school sweetheart and has a child of her own (thus proving that life does go on…sniff), and lastly, the teenaged ghost of murdered Susie Salmon transcends her personal minor heaven (a staging ground for spirits who persistently cling to the living world) by ‘falling’ back to earth, inhabiting the now 20-something body of a lesbian acquaintance in order to trespass into another person’s home and have sex with the now 20-something boy she had a crush on shortly before her murder. The moral? Only after wilfully experiencing the delightful carnal pleasures of the flesh can one, even the spirit of a murdered teenaged girl, let go of those lost earthly pleasures and move on to a higher and presumably more enlightened plane of existence where you are free to smite those that have wronged you. Touching, really.

The Lovely Bones reviews
-Why do they always say “brutal” murder or “brutal” rape? Is that opposed to the “wonderful” murders and “superb” rapes in other novels?
-Did any of these reviewers even read the book?! They just seem to be reading each other’s reviews, praising the unique first person narrative of a protagonist in heaven and how it deals with such a horrifying topic. The fist person perspective does not offer anything new and the only thing horrifying here is that people consume mind-numbing garbage like this at an alarming rate.
-There’s nothing new here. What was the point? Aside from, paranormal sex is a wonderfully liberating experience for both the possessive-spiri

It’s the supporting characters that make this book so memorable. Her distracted mother with the ocean eyes, her friend Ruth who’s soul she continues to touch from her heaven; her eccentric alcoholic grandma Lynn; her brilliant sister Lindsey; but most poignant of all her father Jack Salmon who just doesn’t know how to let go of his little girl. Imaginative, original, thoughtful; just a great story.

"Our only kiss was like an accident- a beautiful gasoline rainbow.”

"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections – sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at a great cost, but often magnificent – that happened after I was gone."

I hardly ever read books when they are first released. I always seem to be a few years behind, for whatever reason. Sometimes this works to my advantage, as it allows me to avoid a degree of hype that surrounds certain books. I do remember seeing the blue cover of The Lovely Bones on shelves in every bookstore when it was released a few years ago and seeing mentions on best-sellers lists. But I didn’t take much interest in it because, sometimes, when a book/movie/album gets so many rave reviews, I’ll expect it to blow me through the roof and will end up disappointed when it’s only mildly entertaining or moving (see: The Time Traveler’s Wife).

I prefer to go in with low expectations and let myself be surprised with greatness. Not that I’m a bitter person or anything. Not at all. Ok, I’m working on it.

Anyway, I was visiting my tiny local library for the first time, searching for a book to check out, when I saw the blue spine peaking out from the shelf. Since I had already read the few classics they had in stock, and don’t really go for Harlequin romance, I took Alice Sebold home with me. Much to my surprise, I finished the book in a day’s time.

It wasn’t so much Sebold’s writing style, which is good but not spectacular, or even the tinges of mystery in the plot that captivated me. It was the raw human emotion that she so perfectly conveyed through each character. The characters felt real—both their positive qualities and their shortcomings. The pain, confusion, regret, and maybe even hope that they each felt in their own ways really impacted me.

The Lovely Bones is the story of a young girl who is raped and murdered in her neighborhood. She speaks to the reader from her version of heaven (it can be different for each person), and looks over her family as they unravel after the tragic event. Perhaps it had something to do with my already delicate state (I was home sick while reading) but the book managed to make me cry. More than once. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that, and the book snob in me would prefer to believe I am “above” sentimental plot devices, but to be honest—the book is just really sad.

I also liked the subtle message of hope that carries through the novel, without reading like a “Chicken Soup” book. The ending isn’t the overly hokey “I will survive” type, and still has a shade of melancholy, but seems to say that even through utter grief and personal devastation, life goes on.

Several years have passed since the publication of Alice Sebold's most famous novel, but back when it was released, The Lovely Bones hit the literary world in a perhaps surprising way. Bluntly dealing with the effects of a young girl's rape and murder and her family's reactions, Alice Sebold uses interesting writing techniques to delve into different viewpoints and point out the enormous impact of such a horrifying family disaster.

In case you haven't read this book yet, it is easy to enter it with wrong expectations. Is it a gruesome, horrifying and tear-jerking account of one family's devastating fate? At some points yes, but overall it is written with a rather hopeful undertone, emphasizing the author's intention to balance out the different elements of the story. Early on in the novel, the main character Susie Salmon is raped and killed on her way home from school, with her soul ascending to heaven. Alice Sebold creates a comforting and soothing image of the heaven Susie's soul rests in to compensate the horrible time Susie's family has to go through in the wake of her death. The book has been confronted with very mixed opinions; after all, even on Goodreads you will find about as many 5-star ratings as you can find 1-star ratings.

Susie's voice accompanies the reader throughout the entirety of the novel, yet she often withdraws into the position of an observer; Sebold presents us with the family's reactions and the events surrounding the search for Susie's real murderer, but rarely gives Susie a chance to comment on what she is capable of seeing from her position in heaven. Thus it may be difficult to relate with any of the characters, even though the author still succeeds in painting a convincing picture of a family's mourning and their longing to find peace again which can only be achieved by the murderer's arrest and punishment. In addition, the narrative is difficult to get into since Susie seems to be capable of reading the minds of her family with no explanation given; apparently Alice Sebold expected us to accept and embrace Susie's ability, but it left me disturbed because Susie kept switching between being an observer and a mind reader.


Susie's heaven in the 2009 movie adaption.

If you have watched the movie, then you should give another thought to reading the book since it approaches the story in a more insightful and moving way than the movie succeeded to do. On the other hand, if you only know the book, you will not regret not watching the movie since it isn't an adaption you could necessarily call 'successful' (or you may watch the trailer which spoils everything that happens in the movie).

Even apart from all the criticism this novel certainly deserved, it can still be recommended for quite a lot of strengths: in the writing of her book, Alice Sebold knew how to convincingly portray a grieving family; she knew how to create a heaven without losing herself in religious details and possibly contradicting descriptions which can easily occur with such a difficult topic. As many readers also pointed out, the first 20% of the novel were mesmerizing and intriguingly written, and during the rest of the book it constantly loses its appeal, then picks it up again only to lose it again after another couple of pages. You may love it or hate it, every reader might find a different approach to either embrace the beautiful aspects of the novel (which were definitely present), or to criticize the rather offsetting moments. (To give an example, right before the ending a scene occured which I had to completely block out of my memory because it made me want to throw my book against the wall in frustration.)

One of the book's greatest qualities may be that it somehow manages to stay with you. However, even if the premise interests you there is no guarantee you will love the book, just as you may like it even though the premise sounds dull to you. Personally, I liked the novel (definitely more than the movie), but neither did it convince nor annoy me. If you haven't yet, you may want to wait with reading the book until you really feel in the proper mood for it.