The lonely bones is a movie I've never seen. It's based on a good premise all the missing girl from the 1970s. I just never was enthralled or impressed by the writing.

The story starts off with Susie salmons death. She is abused by a vile man then killed. It was a very starting first chapter that left me wondering what I was in for while reading further. The man has done this before and knows how to hide his acts of violence. The story progresses with Susie in heaven watching her family deal with the tragedy of her death. The neighborhood has a vigil for her after a year and almost forget her parents. She come back briefly to have sex with her old boyfriend which was very important to her. But I found kinda weird. It might have been just me but I had trouble believing any of the story. It wasn't a neat clear cut story but it all turned out alright somehow. The story also jumped around a lot and seem to never end with yet another side story.

I'm not sure I want to see the movie. I'll leave that up to my wife. The audible I listened to was read by the author. It was not a good narration that might have been a problem as well.

It's okay. I didn't need my heart anyway.

This is the first audiobook I've listened to a while, and now I understand why I stopped listening to them. This book was just alright, and I'll probably forget about it in two days because I was passively listening to it as I cleaned my apartment.

I will admit I kind of only read this because it's so popular and I wanted to see what's behind that popularity, which in itself wasn't a whole lot. I liked the idea of this book and Susie's narration, and where I thought it would be more of a "let's catch the murderer" book, it was a lot more heartfelt. I just wasn't wowed by it and that could either be the book itself or the fact that I listened to it on audio while I was doing something else, so I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention. It was hard to suspend my disbelief for the last section of this book where some fabulism kicks in. Guess it depends on your view of religion and the afterlife if you think this book is touching and comforting or just mediocre.

I'm not really sure if I enjoyed this book or not.

When I first picked it up, I was expecting a really good read as I'd heard such good things about it but I have to say that it didn't quite live up to my expectations. I was bored through a lot of it. I enjoyed the last chapter, but I think that was because I knew I had finally finished the book!

I should have ignored the hype and gone in with zero expectations.

Three stars.

Had this been left as a short story or a novella, it would have gotten a much better rating. I absolutely loved the first 80 pages or so. Affecting, comedic, disturbing, creepy, heartwarming, etc etc. Unfortunately, some the of the characters ended up bugging me too much, and the story went from poignant to afflicting, from comedic to moronic, from heartwarming to dull. The edgy wise-cracking, and apparently omniscient, grandma was a stupid idea for this story. We already have a dead girl up in “heaven” telling the reader what's going on in everyone's mind. The concept of the world-weary granny picking up on nuances that went unexplained to the reader was annoying and messed up the flow for me. That the mom of the dead girl and the emotionally reserved tough guy detective developed a budding romance...C'MON! F'real?! That idea would've best been reserved for an episode of ER or some other crap. The rift that developed between the mother and father could've been formulated much more subtly. Throwing an affair (and a fuck at the mall??) in there was just plain lazy. I quit reading the book shortly after the braniac turned spy-kid younger sister broke into the murderer's basement. And how do we know who the murderer is? Well, the dead girl tells us. That makes sense. But Dad knows who the murderer is, too, because he built a tent with the guy in his backyard...and he just knows...the wind blew in the right direction or some stupid thing. And grandma knows because Dad told her...and because Dad helped the murderer build a tent in the murderer's backyard, and the wind blew just so...well! It MUST be true! And the braniac spy-kid younger sister knows who the murderer is because both Dad and Grandma told her. My interest in this book totally vanished. Dang, too bad, cuz this thing started out so so good. Better luck next time, Alice. I like your writing style, at least.

اول کتاب شروع قوی داشت و کل داستان منتظر بودم که جریان شروع شده رو ادامه بده ولی انتظارم نا امید کننده بود.
بنظرم این خیلی تصور کریپییه که یکی در هر حال و کل زندگی آدمو بتونه نگاه کنه و حتی خصوصی ترین قسمتای زندگیت رو ناظر باشه. درکل قسمتای حرص درار زیاد داشت.
بدون علت طولانی شده بود و جزییات بدون نیاز زیادی داده بود در انتها جمع بندی سرسری و بیخودی داشت.
ولی نکته جالبی که داشت و کتاب رو متمایز کرده بود این بود که چطور زندگی ادامه داره و با وجود اینکه یکیو از دست میدی همچنان باید زندگی کنی، باید ادامه بدی.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Contemporary + Young Adult

This story is told from a spirit’s perspective. Susie Salmon was fourteen years old when she was murdered. The new place she is in is a temporary place before her spirit reaches its final destination. She calls it heaven though. But before her spiritual being moves on it will need to witness what is happening with the family she left and how her father and sister will struggle to find her killer. The fantasy element in the story is prominent.

This is my first read of this book. I went into it knowing the whole story as I have already watched the movie adaptation when it was released many years ago. The book is very atmospheric. It is about many things like family grief, having a crush on someone, spirituality, and accepting your own reality. I liked the 1970s setting a lot. The book vividly shows what might happen to some families and how they can break up when a tragedy occurs. The author has given Susie all kinds of emotions watching over her family but not being able to intervene or help them. All the frustration and sadness the girl was experiencing in her narration will impact the reader for sure.

One thing I am really glad about Alice Sebold’s writing is that she did not resort to explicit supernatural elements to make the story move and unfold. She kept it subtle and I feel that gave a unique beauty to the story besides the melancholy feel. Despite all these pros, you have to keep in mind that the story has some strong trigger warnings which might affect some readers negatively. If you enjoy a haunting story dealing with grief and questioning about the afterlife I think you will like this one. I did.

I saw the movie years ago and remember it differently than the book. So some of the content was surprising to me. I’m undecided on how I feel about these differences. I think I liked the movie better than the book because the movie was more dramatic and had actual resolution. The book is satisfying in a different way, and in some ways, more realistic in that when people die, the rest of us still need to find a way to keep living.

I thought the writing was strong, but I’m conflicted on the story.

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.

Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie, a girl raped and murdered at the age of 14, narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case, struggling to accept her death while as well as clinging to the lost world of the living.
The book started out strong, but it fizzled completely in the middle. Sebold kept giving hints of a great story, but fell short with endless, boring, inconsequential details and a lack of detail when it really mattered. Call me unimaginative, but I don't like when a writer leaves important details to the readers imagination. Spell it out for me.
Being an avid mystery/horror story lover, and reading my fair share of books regarding the "great beyond", I didn't get the feeling she had enough knowledge to adequately write about such topics. Her clues and climaxes went nowhere and it left me with more questions than answers. She would draw me in with these little details I thought she's expand on, and never did.
If you're not a very sentimental person, don't buy this book. If you're the type of person that likes closure at the end of the story, don't read this book. If you're looking for a wonderful view of heaven and the "great beyond", don't read the book.
Anyway, it's just my advice. Opinion depends upon each reader's point of view.

(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.

3.5 rounded up