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.

The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones is a 2002 novel by American writer Alice Sebold. It is the story of a teenage girl who, after being raped and murdered, watches from her personal Heaven as her family and friends struggle to move on with their lives while she comes to terms with her own death.

On December 6, 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon takes her usual shortcut home from her school through a cornfield in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

George Harvey, her 36-year-old neighbor, a bachelor who builds doll houses for a living, persuades her to look at an underground kid's hideout he constructed in the field.

Once she enters, he rapes and murders her, then dismembers her body and puts her remains in a safe that he dumps in a sinkhole, along with throwing her charm bracelet into a pond.

Susie's spirit flees toward her personal Heaven, and in doing so, rushes past her classmate, social outcast Ruth Connors, who can see Susie's ghostly spirit. ...

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سی ام اکتبر سال 2003میلادی

عنوان: استخوانهای دوست داشتنی؛ اثر: آلیس سبالد (سیبالد)؛ مترجم: فریدون قاضی نژاد؛ تهران، روزگار، 1382، در 495ص، شابک9643740285؛ چاپ دوم 1383، چاپ چهارم 1384؛ چاپ پنجم 1386؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات آمریکا سده 21م

عنوان: استخوانهای دوست داشتنی؛ اثر: آلیس سیبالد؛ مترجم: میترا معتضد؛ تهران، البرز، 1382، در 435ص، شابک 9644423682؛

عنوان: استخوانهای دوست داشتنی؛ اثر: آلیس سیبالد؛ مترجم: فریده اشرفی؛ تهران، مروارید، 1383، در 421ص، شابک 9645881536؛

قهرمان داستان، دختری چهارده ساله، به‌ نام «سوزی» است؛ او پس از آنکه از سوی «جرج هاروی»، مورد تجاوز قرار گرفته، و به قتل می‌رسد، با زبانی کودکانه، و جذاب، رویدادهای پس از مرگ خویش را، روایت می‌کند؛ لحن کودکانه ی «سوزی»، با گذشت سال‌ها، همچنان کودکانه می‌ماند، و این روح، به روایت ماجراهایی می‌پردازد، که در طول ده سال، پیرامون والدین، دوستان، پلیس، و حتی قاتلش، رخ می‌دهد؛ راوی همچنین توصیفی ساده و صمیمی، از بهشتی که در آن مستقر شده، ارائه می‌دهد؛ و ...؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 14/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 17/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

The Lovely Bones has got to be the most baffling, poorly written, jaw-droppingly bad book that I have ever set my eyes on. It is truly a black, black tragedy that the words in this book were placed in that particular order, published, and distributed. How could this have ever possibly been popular? Is it for the same reason that the song “My Humps” hit number one? I mean, I don’t technically believe in burning books, but this novel really got me thinking. About burning it.

If it serves any use at all, it might be a perfect guide on how not to write a book. Here are some of my gripes, problems and issues that we can hopefully use to prevent something like this from ever happening again to us, our children, or our children’s children:

It is filled with some of the worst sentence-level writing that I have ever encountered. From bad description to horrible grammar to utterly confusing metaphors, Sebold covered it all. A tell-tale way to spot a weak writer? They can’t stop weirdly describing people’s eyes. Don’t believe me? Try this sentence: “Her eyes were like flint and flower petals.” Or this one: “The tears came like a small relentless army approaching the front lines of her eyes. She asked for coffee and toast in a restaurant and buttered it with her tears.” Really? She buttered the coffee and toast with her tears? Or this one, this time about someone’s heart: “Her heart, like a recipe, was reduced.” What the hell?

And here’s my favorite eye description in the book: “Her pupils dilated, pulsing in and out like small, ferocious olives.” That’s right. Ferocious olives. I’ve read MadLibs that make more sense than that.

It seems to lack a plot. You know, that thing that books are supposed to have. I’ll never forget my first workshop with Brady Udall, in which he threw my story onto the table and said, “This isn’t a story, Sarah, it’s a situation.” And as much as I despaired when I got home, he was right. Sebold has the same problem: her book is a really long situation. A girl dies and watches her family from heaven. Okay. That’s nice. But what do the characters want? What drives the story forward? Nothing. The characters get older and keep bumping into each other. Things change, and things often do, but there is no forward movement and certainly no building of suspense.

Since there’s no plot, the ending is just a bunch of weird stuff happening. I read the last thirty pages on the train this morning, and couldn’t stop a few outbursts: “Oh, no she didn’t!” I’d say, talking to Alice Sebold and her crazy ways. She is just plain bold when it comes to doing whatever she feels like, and she feels like doing the weirdest stuff ever. It’s not that I don’t want to write spoilers here, it’s that I can’t even explain to you what happened at the end of the book. And I bet she can’t either. I’m not exaggerating.

Her characters never have interesting or complex thoughts. Not even the serial killer or the mother whose daughter was murdered. It seems that Sebold’s characters do one of two things: they laugh (which means they are happy) or cry (to butter their toast, somehow, when they are sad). As you might guess, there is a lot of laughing and crying in this book. When a character is confused, they laugh and cry at the same time. This also happens often.

I feel a little better after venting. But I’m still deeply sad and angry. I feel like my own writing might have been permanently damaged by reading this book… like a couple of… ferocious… olives?

I have no idea how so many people can love such a boring, pointless book. I don't read a lot of juggernaut pop-fiction, but at least with "DaVinci Code" I can see the appeal; this one's draw baffles me. Besides being uninteresting, there are two plot points that were just rancid:

1. The mom suddenly deciding to return to her family when the dad has a heart attack.

2. Susie possesses Ruth's body so she can fuck the med student. So if you die a virgin, God lets you back on Earth for a few hours to bang someone with another person's genitals, putting them at risk for an STD or unwanted pregnancy? What if you die as a toddler, do you still get to come back and fuck someone? Also, she says she doesn't want to go after her murderer while in the host, that's real fucking nice, Susie, the whole book's about you wishing you hadn't died and the strain it put on your family, and you'd rather take a dick in a bathtub then stop him from raping/killing more children. That's great. And that whole idea was a rip-off of the movie "Ghost," remember? If you're gonna plagiarize from a Patrick Swayze movie, please make it "Roadhouse."

P.S. The real version of this book is called "Remember Me" by Christopher Pike which I read when I was ten.

One book, two rapes. How's that for a bargain? (The book only advertises one.) Yuck.

The book in question is Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. I'm not giving anything away by saying it's a book about a girl (the narrator) who was murdered. That's revealed in the book's second sentence. It's also not a big deal to let you know she was raped and murdered by a neighbour, George Harvey. That all is related pretty early on. What isn't revealed until maybe the last fifty pages is that the girl herself, Susie Salmon, becomes a rapist.

Ideologically, I'm not certain which one is worse. I could be persuaded.

But the way the book presents the two incidents is markedly different. One is revealed in low lights and has a horror edge to it. It's seen unilaterally as an evil, wicked deed. The other is the book's highlight, the moment at which the author breathes a sigh of relief and says that everything else made right. I suppose it makes sense; the narrator probably wouldn't see her actions for what they were. But in the end, both George and Susie deal with their childhood victimizations in that manner typical to the criminal genre these days.

Both George and Susie had horrible things happen in their formative years that leave long-lasting scars. The only difference is that George Harvey lived and Susie Salmon died. Not that it makes much difference. Susie is as alive a character as George for the purposes of the story. They both want what they want and care little for the well-being of the women who get in their way. The difference is that George Harvey is portrayed as the villain he is, while little Susie Salmon is treated as a hero.

Those who have read the book may not have even noticed Susie's complete abandonment of moral sense or care for the woman she violates. After all, she doesn't exactly couch things in those terms. So here it is, laid out for you.

When Susie was alive, there was a boy who liked her, Ray. In the years after her death, Ray grows up to be, in the narrator's view, an attractive young man. She watches him and loves him. Somehow, events conspire to allow Susie to possess the body of Ruth, a friend of Ray's. Susie uses the opportunity to seduce Ray and they make love several times in the course of a few hours. And then Susie has to go back to heaven. Leaving Ruth, a victim of Susie's power over her body.

Imagine that you're Ruth. You wake up. Naked. Probably a little tender. Used. In the back of some bike shop. With a man in the shower. That's what I call horror. Not only was she not conscious or aware for any of the immediately preceding events, but the guy who's been really her only friend in the world is now naked and telling her that he screwed her brains out while she was unconscious. And even if he doesn't tell her that, there's a very short rail of evidence and it all points to that conclusion. And now. She could be pregnant. She could be diseased.

Yep. The crowning act of love on the part of the tale's heroine is little more than a petty, rapacious act of power over the helpless woman who got in her way. Good job Susie Salmon. You and George Harvey should get along nicely.

p.s. even though I called it a spoiler, I think that Alice Sebold spoiled the book. Not me.

Well that wasn't a happy happy good time...

The Lovely Bones is going to be difficult to review without spoilers, so if you haven't read it yet I'm gonna have to go ahead and ask you to leave, m'kay?

Why am I not surprised to learn that Alice Sebold was raped at a young age? Because only someone who'd been through something as horrific as that would write a book like this. I'm not just talking about the subject matter, but rather the tone. Everything about this book is a victim's silent scream. Suzie, the dad, the surviving kids...it seems like everyone has someone taken from them. Maybe even the mom. I mean after all, the life she wished to lead was raped from her after she had the chance to lead it.

Honestly, I thought this was going to be even more depressing than it turned out to be. There's an unexpected hopeful strain through out, a nice pairing with some of Sebold's better writing.

On the other hand, some of her writing is irritating. Most notably were the many instances in which she attempts to utilize suspense writer techniques. As readers we are expecting a divulgence of information regarding the focal murder of the story. So, it's a big old tease when Sebold abruptly states "I saw him." Many times out of the blue she starts a new paragraph or section with just such a line and then goes on to talk about the family dog or some other nonsense. It's bullshit.

Overall though, this isn't bad. At times I enjoyed this look (maybe not the POV from which the story's told) at the after affects of a young girl's mysterious murder. The grieving period for family and friends, and the various paths each of them takes, is portrayed with authenticity. Some grieve harder than others. This isn't a murder mystery, this is real life. It's not always interesting or entertaining. Sometimes it's just sad and thought provoking.

So yes, I did like The Lovely Bones, but as for my tepid 3-star rating, all I can say is, Oprah lied. She told millions to read this and their perseverance upon that endeavor eventually got me to do the same. I read it. I was not Oprah-amazed. Why blame her? Because if she hadn't kicked it all off with her recommendation, I never would've read this. It's just not in my wheelhouse. Thus, I never would've had the opportunity to give this a lower rating. So, if you feel 3 stars is too low, blame Oprah.

Wow. I'm surprised that there was so much animosity towards this book (from the reviews here on Good Reads). Even if I didn't like it, I don't think I'd find so much in it to HATE it. The approach is different, which some might call trite or some call imaginative. I think I just liked Susie. She spoke what was on her mind, the perspective was fresh and the subject wasn't typical. Maybe this was a product of hype? I hadn't heard of it until a few friends recommended it to me last week. It took me a few hours to read and I enjoyed it. I won't rave on it, but I appreciate a good story.

I worked at Borders for more than a year and I worked the boring ass registers, usually at night whic was always slow. I leaned there with my chin in my hand staring at the shelves actually wishing that I could help customers in their purchases. It's purely insane, but I think that's what happens anytime you place someone in any kind of confinement. The thing is that if I wasn't a register girl, I would have constant actual contact with the books themselves.

All lunacy aside, one book that I stared at the entire time was this one, cuz it was literally on the number one shelf in the front of the store for a good two years or so. It sounded interesting and got good critical reviews despite its sucess with the bookish Oprah-watching housewife types. So, I REALLY didn't wanna jump on the bandwagon and read it. But at the same time I would open it and try. But I just didn't get into it.

Last week or so, I was reading a friend's blog and she talked about reading the book and how it was so affecting that she found herself driving to work in complete tears. From then on an invisible seed had been planted. I went to the library the other day to pay my fines ($2.75! Man.) and suddenly remembered the book.

I read it in three nights. Sebold's voice is entirely unique. Never seen it before ever. I think that being allowed into the vision and point of view of another person is probably one of the awesomest feelings ever. I think that's what it is to be in love, actually. Get in someone's skin, sit in a recliner in a little theatre located behind their eye sockets, and just watch. Not judge, not worry, not affect. Just experience someone who is so not you.

Sebold allows this on two levels. She sets you up in the front row seat right next to Susie the murdered and raped 14 year old while she watches her former world from Heaven. But she also delivers this language that is new, original, totally fresh and yet entirely accessible. At 3am. In bed. From a free city library borrow.

Her characters are completely amazing individuals, but not unreal or impossible. The way she wrote the book, from Suzie's viewpoint, was definitely some work on her part. And she pulls it off. What I really enjoyed is the way she would sneak in these little pieces of info - I call them " 'omg, are you serious?' mystery info nuggets". She would just be writing a scene, and at an unsuspecting moment she'd just add in a little sentence. And ofcourse, since the story revolves around the grief of the family and the Susie's unsolved case, their are moment of utter thrill as the reader joins the characters in their search for understanding, motive and the killer himself. The sentences feel like when you've been looking for something non-urgent for a while, and it's not really a big deal to find it now or later, but when you do find it your like, 'Man, now I can do this, and this and that, cuz I finally found this thing that I've been inactively searching for for a while'. So, the nuggets definitely keep you reading and sometimes they even make you say, 'omg' out loud.

As always, if you read the first few pages and hate it, then don't force the feeling. Just cuz I thought it was a total modern classic, don't mean anything if it really ain't your thing. Either way, truly a great story, even if your mom thinks so too.

I can't review this book by thinking about the plot or about theme and diction, for it is only (and truly) a series of snapshots, candid and sore, that piece together the lives of living people. The delicate sweet soul of a father; a grandmother with the heart of an empath; a sister whose youth and adulthood travel arm in arm; a numb and emptied mother; a young girl then grown woman living pierced on the periphery. This book is about the people in my life and yours whose very essence is pinned down to a spot in time and space--these lovely bones, growing in a soft-shelled skeleton around our lives. It is by turning the pages where these bones grow, that I could reflect on the wheel of life--what a joy (can you call it joy when it's sad?) to witness humanity breathing ceaselessly, moving forward, and loving without remorse. I am at peace to think that this sweet family, though scarred, will smile at another sunrise.

To touch the living is a precious thing.

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.

THE LOVELY BONES by Alice Sebold earned 5 intense stars from me!

My Tease…

Heaven’s Inbetween is for “the watchers,” those souls who aren’t ready to leave behind their connections to Earth. Souls…who have unanswered questions or unfinished business. Who haven’t learned to accept their deaths.

Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon is a watcher.

Although Susie knows that Mr. Harvey (whose house is in her neighborhood) raped and murdered her, none of the living know. At least Susie’s father and her younger sister Lindsey have growing suspicions about the loner who has a bird’s-eye-view of Susie’s junior high school and the adjacent sports- and corn- fields from his second floor window. Trouble is, the police have no evidence to implicate Mr. Harvey. All law enforcement knows is that the eccentric widower answers all their questions.

In her Inbetween Heaven, Susie has her own questions, only she doesn’t know the answers. Should she spend her time watching Mr. Harvey, in hopes that he will be stopped? Or should she watch her family as they struggle to accept her death and move forward?

Which focus will heal Susie so she can leave the Inbetween and transition to the Heaven intended to bring her peace?

Thoughts…

MESSAGE:

For me, THE LOVELY BONES offers a spiritual message, which is remarkable since I don’t remember religion being mentioned once!

The story, however, is much more than its surface. From my perspective, THE LOVELY BONES addresses the ancient question of where we (the living and the dead not resting in peace) should focus. Should we focus on plucking out the weeds (like vile Mr. Harvey) in our “fields” of existence? Or…should we focus on growing the corn or wheat or soybeans (which when healthy, will choke out the weeds)?

This seems to be the very question character Susie Salmon struggles with.

I can empathize with this internal conflict, as I wanted more than anything to have Mr. Harvey plucked from the Earth and thrown into burning Hell. To be frank, it was this desired outcome that compelled me to flip the pages.

In fact, I actually wanted to take away a star from my rating because… I didn’t get what I wanted for a long, long time. Mr. Harvey lived on and on and even became secondary in the story. I started shouting to the author…WHAT ABOUT MR. HARVEY??? He’s still on Earth STALKING AND KILLING young girls and women??? DO SOMETHING! NOW!!!

Years later, something FINALLY does happen to Mr. Harvey, but it feels more by chance than by intention. (The movie made it seem like a deliberate intervention, but I didn't get that from the book at all.)

But then I restored the star because… this is a story of acceptance and finding peace, not on delivering retribution. Of knowing what you can control and what you can’t. About growing and finding peace despite evil lurking in cornfields or neighborhoods or parks or buses.

Not sure about you, but this focus and practice are difficult to achieve. Which is why the message is so important. Which grows peace faster…growing goodness or weeding out evil? The answer is certainly worth thinking about!

WRITING:

The writing is outstanding. Even the simplest sentences carry emotional weight:

“Inside, my sister’s heart closed like a fist.”

HUMOR:

No doubt, it is hard to interject humor into a story like this; however, there is some humor found:

“Grandma Lynn predicted I’d have a long life because I had saved my brother’s life. As usual, Grandma Lynn was wrong.”

OVERALL:

This was an intense read that offered a surprising message.

I highly recommend this 5-star read about finding acceptance and peace among the vilest of weeds.

Note: This book contains triggers regarding rape and sexual violence toward children, girls, and women.

Haaaaaated it. I am one of those OCD literary nerds who takes on a war bunker mentality with books that I've started and dislike: "I will see this through to the end."
For "The Lovely Bones," I made an exception.
Somewhere, sometime, someone told Sebold she could write. That person should be made to apologize to me, in person, and to all other poor souls who were duped into buying this shlock.
The literary press also needs to break out the cattails for a serious bout of flogging. Lev Grossman of Time Magazine is at the top of my flogging docket; he called this book "a beautiful, sensitive, melancholy novel" and repeated that claim a year later in a review for a book called "The Dogs of Babel" (a book just as terrible as The Lovely Bones). I can only assume that Mr. Grossman confined his reading to the zeros on the check accompanying the publisher's blurb or else has some sort of vitamin deficiency that causes his brain to process ham-handed tripe as "beautiful" art.
It was Mr. Grossman's review along with the alluring premise of the novel (a young girl posthumously tries to make sense of the events that led to her death) that led me to order "The Lovely Bones" and "The Dogs of Babel," which at the time were only available in hardcover. Financial reasons made this an extremely uncommon practice for me, and my experience reading both of those novels ensured that I would never do so again.
To further illustrate how absolutely wretched this novel is, I'm going to provide a paragraph of background. The "substance" of the novel will be criticized in the subsequent body of this review.
During the summer of 2003, I was occupying space as an intern at a company that accepted me at the last minute and had nothing for me to do. The company was white-collar and behemoth in office space. HR sent me to an deserted floor to file documents that took up, at most, 2 hours of my 8-hour day. Even in this vacuum of monotony, I could not finish this book. I chose to watch paint chip away, and pick up dust bunnies with recycled paper (I didn't have a broom) rather than finish this book.
So with that said, I suppose I should actually mention something specific about the book I hated. My caveat here is that I am unwilling to punish myself by picking through a copy of the book for textual examples. I'm going by memory and online synopses alone.
The narrator and victim is "Susie Salmon." Let me stop there. SUSIE SALMON. That really should have clued me in, but I was too eager to see how the author would represent the afterlife, to catch a glimpse of this beautiful pain of looking a life that goes on without you.
Unfortunately, Sebold managed to bleach out anything remotely interesting out of the plot in spectacular fashion. Heaven is a school, you see, not that Susie spends much time there or learns anything. Her rapist and murderer is a creepy loser while somehow being the dullest of all of Sebold's numerous dull characters. The "reason" for his murderous tendencies could be guessed by anyone who's ever even heard of a pop psychology book.
You'd think her family would at least be interesting in grief, but Sebold reduces them to one note drones.
Everything in The Lovely Bones is a gimmick, played cheaply for sentiment and with no other reward. I'd compare to a Hallmark movie, but Hallmark movies do not adopt the pretension that Sebold belabors with terrible pseudo-post-modernist metaphors.
All of this would be bad enough, but what made me throw this book "aside with great force" is the offensive, and unjustifiable resolution to Susie's laments that she did not get to live. This unfairness, although poorly developed, was at least a cause of sympathy until Susie decides to forcibly correct it at the expense of others. In the hands of someone else, this last turn could've been bleak insight into motivations of the cycle of victimization but Sebold conveys not one iota of ambivalence.
Much of my hatred of this novel results from its inexplicable popularity and commendation from people who have a responsibility to promote reading. I shudder to think who else picked up this novel convinced it was the best that the contemporary literary world had to offer. It is not my intention to slam those who enjoyed this book. If you did, I am glad to hear it. I love books, and I want others to love books. I simply fear that someone who is tempted out of a long vacation from reading might pick up a novel like this and give up the cause for lost.