Reviewed by Cana Rensberger for TeensReadToo.com

THE LOVELY BONES will haunt you. This book tells the story of the most horrific thing a family could ever endure, the murder of a loved one, a child.

The child is 14-year-old Susie Salmon. We see the murder through her eyes, after she is killed. Susie narrates her story from heaven, a place like I'd not before imagined. Her heaven begins as her school playground. Slowly it grows to become more. Susie merely longs for something she misses from earth, and it appears, except, of course, the living. Although she can watch her loved ones, know what they are doing, thinking, and feeling, she cannot be with them, or they with her.

The book begins with the emotional, frightening, and vividly shown homicide. Through Susie's eyes, we understand how he tricked her. We feel her terror as we realize, with her, what's about to happen. Then the scene moves to another, equally heartbreaking moment, three days later when a neighbor's dog finds a body part.

You would think, at this point, that you wouldn't be able to read further, that you'd close the book and never reopen it. But you won't be able to. Like Susie, we want to know her family will be okay. We want to know the killer won't get away with it. The author, Alice Sebold, artfully forces you to read on.

Susie watches her friends whisper about her at school. She watches as her younger sister, Lindsey, hardens to stone. Her four-year-old brother, Buckley, is passed from neighbor to neighbor, having sleepovers, told his sister has just gone away for a bit. She listens to the detective, Len, tell her parents the inevitable, that they are now investigating her disappearance as a murder. Her family slowly begins to crumble and Susie can do nothing to help.

This sounds like a suffocating, depressing book, but as you read you'll feel encouraged as Susie's family begins to move on, never to forget, but to begin to live life without her. Buckley struggles to understand the meaning of forever. Susie's dad becomes obsessed with proving he's not crazy, that he's certain who killed his daughter. Susie's mom handles the stress by hiding from it. And Lindsey, known as the girl whose sister was murdered, strives to find herself again. She searches for love. And she takes a huge risk to help her dad flush out the killer.

The ending is incredibly sweet. Amazing as it may seem, you will feel Susie's joy as she lets go of those she's left behind. For me, the ending wasn't perfect, it left me wanting, but I imagine that was deliberate. Life itself is not perfect. But life has hope. And that's the feeling that will stay with you as you turn the last page. It's a memorable read, not for the faint of heart. Expect to feel. To fear, to cry, and, yes, to laugh. THE LOVELY BONES will touch the very core of your being. Alice Sebold has written beautifully of the ugliest scenario possible. Wow.

"The Lovely Bones," had me crying from start to finish. This book is extremely emotion packed. But this book was interestingly written because it's from the point of view from a girl who was murdered. The book starts like this: "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." Already you want to read it; right? You follow the life that this young girl once had as she tells you about the memories she had, the things she learned, and the people she loved. Susie also talks about her "heaven." In her heaven, Susie does not let her family and friends go. She follows them through the years, watching her younger sister Lindsey does everything that she would have done if she was alive. Susie can't let her family go, and they see her everywhere; in the valley where she was killed; in her fathers work room. It makes you value your family when you read about the devastation they were left with. I especially was sympathetic for her father. Through out the book you can see how difficult it was for him to realize and begin to let go of the fact that his first born had been killed. It's hard to imagine losing a child, but from reading this book I’ve begun to realize that it's a kind of sorrow that can only be felt by a parent. If you are in the mood for reading a depressing story then this book is definitely for you.
The diction that Alice Sebold uses creates clear visuals in my head of what it was that Susie saw, and what she felt like being dead. You invision her family members and the environment that Susie had once been in. Another things that made me like this book so much was the fact that there were details that were used to help describe Susie that were also about me. A simple once was the fact that she was reading Othello in school. The use of details to develope the characters are very well done by Alice Sebold.

This is a fine novella which some enterprising editor persuaded Sebold to transform into a novel. And the novel is not a good one, featuring unbelievable twists and turns and a super creepy ending (but not super creepy in a good way) reminiscent of the movie "Ghost."

My advice: read the first third and stop. If I had done that, I might have given it four stars.

This book has single handedly shown me that I spend too much time skimming and not enough time really reading and thinking about the books I have been reading. I have two kids and so I'm busy and I often find myself reading when I am stealing time or tired. But that is not even an excuse for this book. When i read the book I thought it was pretty good. Not great, but not bad. I liked the concept and the fact that the girl was the narrator. I like a murder mystery, so I liked the suspense of waiting to see if the guy would get caught, etc. So when all was said and done and I finished the book, I thought - yeah, okay. Not bad, but not great. Then I went online here and read the other reviews, particularly one by TheDane (http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/16...) and I went - HEY!! That's right! I mean, the writing alone is something I should have picked up one had I really been paying attention. Pupils pulsing like olives?? Buttering toast with tears?? Umm... I really must have been distracted or skimming like crazy because that is ridiculous. And the real meaning of the final scene went WAY over my head, which I am somewhat ashamed to admit. When I read it, I really was like, yeah yeah, oh that's sweet she got one night with her boyfriend which she had been cheated of and all. But when you slow down and really think of this, the enormity of that is overwhelming. A young girl who dies after being RAPED. A girl who's first sexual experience was RAPE by an older man. A girl who actually barely knew this boy in her life. This girl can only let go of life after having sex. With that boy. That she really didn't know that well. That alone is enough to send of some big alarms. But then you add that she was allowed to go back to earth - to have sex??? Not see her family, not comfort her father and brother and sister? Not point out the killer?? Nope, heaven lets her go back, then of all times, not earlier when she wanted it more, or could have done more both for justice and her family? So the admission to heaven is teen sex? Really? The way to overcome deep grief and gain acceptance and peace is.. again, teen sex? Wow. I missed out as a teen because that was NOT my experience. Okay, now louder warning bells should have been going off. But the final issue - she takes over the body of a "friend". Without the girl's knowledge or permission. The "friend" who is a lesbian. And uses her body to have sex with a boy. Just taking over her body is a violation. Taking over her body and using that time to have sex is another violation. And to have sex with a boy, knowing that is the antithesis of everything this "friend" would have wanted or agreed to is yet another violation. What the hell??? And none of that gets brought up or mentioned. No, it is a feel good ending. yeah! I mean, I have some pretty close friends - some I have known for at least triple the time these two girls have "known" each other - and if I somehow managed to just steal their bodies and have sex with a woman?? Well, it would be good for me that I was already dead. That is a betrayal in the worst sense on so many levels it is shocking. And what of the possible consequences? Pregnancy? STDs? Never mind the "lesser" consequences of emotional damage, damage to their friendship, the trust issues, etc etc etc????? After thinking about it more and more, I was truly embarrassed to have not seen these dark and disturbing connotations, made all the worse for the fact that the author serves this up as the feel good ending - not noticing the irony at all of having the main character who was raped and violated in turn rape and violate a friend, while denouncing the first act as a heinous crime and lauding the second act as happy ending? So in short, I have learned my lesson and I am now making more of an effort to truly read and then think about what I am reading!!!

This book has the one of the harshest, cruelest, darkest opening, has written its name to the literature history!

After being witnessed sweet 14 years old girl: Susie Salmon’s rape and massacre by her creepy, doll maker, 36 years old neighbor, you want to throw up, scream, pump your fist into something, scream more, wish to do something stop the visual images imprinted on your mind!

It is one of the effective thing you want to forget forever but you know it will never fade away!

As the girl’s mother keep saying her name to summon her to the house, her killer doesn’t stop. He finished what he started and dismembered her body as viciously as he ruined her innocence.

He dumps her into sinkhole and throws at her charming bracelet in the pond!

As her spirit flees from her personal heaven, she starts watching how her family struggle with their lives. She even watches her killer and sees him struggling, too, touching the knife he cut her throat, suffering from emotional turmoil. She wants him dead.

She also finds a way to connect with a school outcast Ruth Connors. From now on there are so many resemblances you can catch with Swayze’s Ghost. Even the ending has so many resemblances.

The book started impressively, earth shatteringly strong and Susie’s heart wrenching and extra traumatic, sad spirit story who is trapped in teenage body with a mature, experienced voice to tell her sadness about the people she left behind and her vengeance story was outstandingly emotional and well written.

For too long, I was planning to read this book. I can only tell one thing, please stay the hell away from the movie adaptation. ( of course it’s not about my hate for actress Saoirse Ronan!) After I watched it, I skipped this book for too long but now I understand they just ruined everything about the story starting with killing its essence and spirit!

It’s truly deep, compelling, unconventional and disturbing story but at least the ending was relieving, more hopeful and taking the emotional pressure out from your chest.

It’s a great book as my flashback Saturday choice.

Here are some quotes I’d like to share:

“Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.”

“Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.”

“Between a man and a woman there was always one person who was stronger than the other one. That doesn’t mean the weaker one doesn’t love the stronger.”

“My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.”

“If I had but an hour of love,if that be all that is given me,an hour of love upon this earth,I would give my love to thee.”

“There was one thing my murderer didn't understand; he didn't understand how much a father could love his child.”

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

I read this book after watching the movie because it was the first time I heard about it.

First, I have to say that I liked the movie very much and I've seen it several times. The scenes from In-Between are one of my all-time favourites. And the moment when Susie's father destroys the ships in bottles is just the best; it keeps popping on my Youtube because I just watched so many times. So, if I go a couple of moths without watching it, Youtube is like: "Here, watch it."

Usually, I'm not much of an audiobook gal, but if there is a version which was narrated by Saoirse Ronan, I'm gonna listen to it!

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

Anyway, why am I talking about a movie here, right? Because I saw it first, I did not compare it with the book, and I believe if I knew the book previous to watching the movie, I would see it in a different light.
However, right now, I see them as two separate entities, there is a movie I enjoy, and a book which is fantastic and both have the power to break my heart.

“And I was gone.”


It's very hard to describe this book without spoiling much. All I'm going to say that even reading quotes gives me the "tension" feeling in my jaw, which I usually have right before I'm about to cry. It just breaks my heart. Because of Susie. Because of the real Susies who go through the same thing she did. Because of their families. And because Georges Harveys exist in the real world.

“The living deserve attention, too.”


But I have to say that this book is right up my alley, I enjoy books when people die and get a chance to relive their last day to make things right, where they are still there and watch their families. It might not be for everyone — definitely something to consider before picking up 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.

Why did this book get so much love? Maybe it's the same reason that child molestation/abduction/murder always shoots to the top of CNN.com's list of most-read stories. America is fascinated with the subject matter. That's the only explanation I can think of.
As has been said by other reviewers here, the book itself was atrociously written, with flat, stereotyped characters and is full of laugh-out-loud awful passages. I only finished it so that no one could pull the old "But it gets better..." on me. It does not.
More generally, I'd also like to add: When people say, "I felt like I knew the characters in (insert title of any book here)," watch out. Sometimes it means that the author has created a strikingly believable character; but more often it means that the author has created a bunch of lifeless characters into whom your friend has pumped the authenticity of people whom they know.

1.5

The Lovely Bones is the perfect example of a brilliant start gone unbelievably wrong.

Pages 1-35 was the only portion of this book that felt genuine to me. The rest of it went from being okay to bad to just plain ridiculous. Chapter 22 was especially painful - and I don't mean that in an emotional context. It was one of those WTF moments that I'm glad was cut from the movie.

Here's something I don't understand - how can Susie read minds?? This is probably a trivial thing but it's been bugging me non-stop. We are not even told when exactly Susie learns about this ability. It's like one day, she just knows what people are thinking - no explanations how or why. I feel this ruined the narration. There were times when it felt like the usual third person narration and not necessarily like a dead girl's view on things (which is what it's supposed to be).

Linsdey was one of the better sketched characters. Her reaction to Susie's death was one of the few things I didn't have trouble believing. Ruth's obsession, on the other hand, was exaggerated and creepy.

I wish Sebold had focused more on Susie's heaven - I quite like the idea of it. But sadly, it's left unexplored, like many other potentially interesting things in the book.

I prefer the movie. It does a better job at keeping you emotionally invested and is easier to endure than 300 pages of nothing happening.

The ending's still lame though.

Have you ever read the introduction to a book and thought the notion so interesting, you began forming ideas for the story in your head?

This was exactly the case for me with 'The Lovely Bones'... It started out as I imagined but really fell apart as the story faltered on. I found it very disappointing and wish another author would run with the idea but in a completely different direction.

It's not the book it's me.... nah, that's to easy.
I suppose this book is well written. It flowed.
It's just the wrong kind of ugly for me.
I wish to take it back out of my thoughts.