The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold

Aug 2002 · Sold by Little, Brown

About this ebook

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

So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.

Ratings and reviews

The beginning was good but then it dragged out so freaking much and at the end it threw the weirdest crap at you, probably in hopes that you wouldn't throw away the book out of bordem. Then its like oh yeah and this is how the killer (harvey) ends... Then its the end and it just leaves you super concerned and disappointed. The only reason I kept reading was. to find out what happens to the killer, but it's super lame. The movie is better.

I had come across "The Lovely Bones" in my local Borders bookstore a few years ago. I started reading it back then, and I really liked what I read. It's a story of a young girl who is raped and killed by a sexual predator/ serial killer, as told from the dead girl's perspective. This was a very unusual and interesting premise, with a lot of potential for a very original and imaginative novel. At the time I did not continue reading the book, but when the movie based on it came out earlier this year I thought that maybe the time had come to read it in its entirety. And this has been one of the greatest disappointments as a reader that I've ever had. The supernatural premise of viewing earthly events from a dead girl's perspective is not really used all that much in the book, except for one brief chapter well towards the end. Even then, the whole incident is completely superfluous to the overall narrative, and it has no discernable effect on the rest of the book. It seems that the choice of the point of view for this book had more to do with the kind of narrative device that the author wanted to employ, rather than with the plot development, only to change her mind at almost the last moment, and then do it haphazardly and then backtrack on her decision. However, even as a pure narrative device this ploy has problems that show throughout the book. Unlike a perfect omniscient narrator, a dead girl is actually pretty limited in her perspective, not least because she can only observe the outward appearances of other protagonists. She does make surmises on people's inner states of mind, but those are usually very restrained and not very convincing. The book fails as a murder-mystery thriller as well. It's not so much that know from the very beginning what happened and who did what, but as the story progresses we get less and less of an impression that most of the relevant characters are truly trying to solve a criminal case. They all make some half-hearted and intermittent steps in trying to solve this murder, but we need to be constantly reminded by the narrator that they do in fact really want to solve the case. Finally, and most disappointingly, the book fails as a coming-to-terms-with-tragedy novel. As previously mentioned, the point of view of the narrative is actually pretty limiting, and we don't really have the full access to the inner thoughts and feeling of various protagonists. We have to be constantly told about what they are going through, which doesn't make for a very satisfying reading experience. Furthermore, most of the characters (even those with more exotic backgrounds) are actually rather flat and uninteresting. Almost every little girl in the story is a more serious embodiment of Lisa Simpson. The reader doesn't feel much of the conviction in their actions and thoughts. I stuck with this book through the very end because I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, a surprising and revelatory ending would make all the reading effort worth it. Unfortunately, that too was a big disappointment. The end left me hanging, and if I had cared more for any of the characters in the book I would have been really frustrated. As it is, I am just left to lament all the time I had wasted on reading this rather unremarkable book. The style of writing is pretty good, something that was obviously tuned in fiction workshops, but in the end not nearly so good to justify wasting so much time on this novel.

I love this book. After seeing the movie i really wanted to relive the excitement so i started to read this novel. The movie does it no justice though :/ If you are under 13 i wouldn't recommend this book because its very gory, sexual and descriptive.

About the author

Alice Sebold is the bestselling author of The Lovely Bones, The Almost Moon, and Lucky a memoir. She lives in California with her husband, the novelist Glen David Gold.