The Lovely Bones

The Author: Alice Sebold

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2002

Length: 372 pages

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The Preface: A few weeks ago I ordered some Indian take-out from Abaruchi in Beaverton and had to kill about 20 minutes before the order was ready. Not wanting to sit in the restaurant and stare at six-armed figurines and a poster of what I assumed to be a Bollywood action star, I headed next door to K-Mart and attempted to kill some time. After quick tours of aisles filled with...um...well...CRAP...I found solace in the books and magazines section and picked up "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold. I had heard that it was being made into a film by Peter Jackson and I knew the book had a lot of success - both commercial and critical - so I picked it up and read through the first few pages. A few days later, in Fred Meyer, I bought a copy.


My Review: The premise is thus: a fourteen year-old girl is brutally raped, murdered, and dismembered by a neighbor in a small Pennsylvania town in 1973. Yikes - right out the gate that's enough to send the squeamish running for a copy of something more banal and safe. Yet - the book is never gory or detail-driven about the grisly death of young Susie Salmon. She states it all so very matter-of-factly. Yes, "she" states it as the book is written from Susie's perspective. She is in heaven (or some near-version of heaven) called "The InBetween" where she watches her family deal (or fail to deal) with the aftermath of her murder and also manages to interweave the back-stories of her family throughout the book. This is a unique narrative because Susie is dead on page one and we know who did it on page two: Mr. Harvey.

As Susie tells her story, the book focuses on the first days, weeks, and months after her murder. While Susie tells us in painful prose about how her mother, Abagail, and her father, Jack, are dealing with the loss of their oldest child, the story, at first, drives the subplot of Mr. Harvey and whether or not he will get caught and how Lindsey (her sister) will help bring the truth to light.

Meanwhile, Susie is adjusting to her new surroundings in heaven. She has some control over her world and finds a modicum of genuine happiness there. Yet, she is still drawn to Earth and to her family and all the friends she's left behind. While she (obviously) knows the truth about Mr. Harvey and the final resting place of her remains, everyone else has only vague suspicions about either. Although her friends and family can still feel her presence every once in a while - Susie can not communicate directly with them and tell them what she desperately wants them to know: where her body lays and who killed her.

However, the police-search/whodunit angle slowly dissolves and the story changes into one that follows the lives of the many people that were touched by Susie. Many in bold and profound ways - and others in more subtle or intimate ways. Her mother, father, sister and brother (Buckley) and Grandmother are left to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives - some doing it more successfully than others.

The book then begins to move more quickly in time, with years going by and her still-unsolved murder becoming less and less of a storyline and more of an afterthought. And this is where the book reveals it's true purpose, and I believe, it's true genius.

The book is not really about Susie Salmon's murder or about how Mr. Harvey does or doesn't get caught. The book is about growing up and growing old and Susie's denial of being allowed to do either. All of Susie's friends move on in school, meet new people, graduate and most importantly - experience love. All of these were denied to her and that's what makes the book so intimately heartbreaking.

I found myself wanting the story to get back to Mr. Harvey and the still-secret location of Susie's remains. Eventually, there is a payoff to this storyline, although it wasn't what I was expected and certainly not what I was "wanting." At least at first. But the more I think about it - the more justice that does to the theme of the book: that life isn't always what you want, nor do you rarely get what you want.

This is the first work I have ever read by Alice Sebold - and that isn't too much of a surprise as she only had one other work printed before TLB. However, I wholy appreciate her sincere, yet subtle way she gives Susie her voice. She never waxes poetic on life nor engages in vitriolic screeds about the man who murdered her. She resorts neither to rhetorical flourish nor the cliche and trite. All characters are real and all are flawed in some way or another. Some more than others.

My main criticism of the book I can't really discuss without revealing certain details of the end of the book. I will surmise it to say that I think it to be a fair criticism by readers who might say, "Why didn't ___________ say __________ to _________" at the end? It would have only taken a second!" I suppose Sebold could argue that "That isn't what the book was about" but that really is immaterial. It feels that Sebold was so wrapped up in making a point about life, love, and youth that she failed to be true to the story - but only for a moment.

In the end, the book is well-written, well-crafted, and has had me thinking about it for several days now. I think it is a thousand times better than "The Shack" - which was little more than philosophical junk-food. This book is meat-and-potatoes.

I now must wonder how Peter Jackson will make this into a movie and still stay true to the story - for it does not suit Hollywood well. But fear not - I'll write a review of that in my movie blog sometime soon!

Amazon page: The Lovely Bones