Pinc's Picks

"The Lovely Bones" -- Alice Sebold

For once I'm not waiting to read my book club selection the weekend before our next meeting. I picked up Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones before my trip home for a wedding (see post below), expecting to finish off perhaps 100 pages by the time I returned to Miami. I had been told by a friend that it was an excellent book, but I wasn't prepared for it to be fully engrossing. By the way, this post will completely ruin the book for you, so if you haven't read it and want to, stop reading this post after the next paragraph.

I probably should start off by admitting that I'm a little bit morbid. I've wondered more than a couple of times what would happen if I died. Not just the teenage pseudo-depressed 'would anyone care if I died?' sort of musings, but more involved thoughts of the ramifications, if any, that would stem from my death. I guess that's normal, right? Or relatively normal? I had a dream in the weeks following September 11th in which I fell off a very high waterfall and died. And as everyone rushed over to the scene of the accident, I learned that those people who really cared about me were able to see me and talk to me, and those who didn't had no idea I was around. While those who didn't care about me planned my funeral, I sat around in another room with my family and close friends. Then I woke up.

The Lovely Bones offers a parallel structure to my dream in the sense that it begins with a death and is followed by the afterlife among the living. In the first chapter, 14 year old Susie Salmon is raped and murdered by a neighbor. Her body is dismembered, discarded, and never found. Her soul brushes past a high school acquaintance on the way to heaven and joins the girl, Ruth, to her.

For the reader, there is no question regarding the killer's identity. Instead of watching a mystery unravel, the reader witnesses the unraveling of Susie's family. The effect of her death on her parents, sister, brother, neighbors, and friends is the heart of the book. For anyone who has ever wondered what would happen to the living after they die, this book provides a good window. Her sister finds comfort in a classmate whom she ultimately marries; her father cannot let go of his quest to find Susie's killer and to keep her alive; her brother sees and hears Susie throughout his life, but grows up in the shadow of a sister he can barely remember; her mother shuts down and abandons her family by escaping to California and a life without a family.

There is a supernatural element to the book as well that is believeable until the end when Susie and Ruth trade bodies for a few hours and Susie able to briefly live again. I adored the book until this point and this twist struck me as completely unnecessary and gratuitous. In addition, the fact that she spent her few hours on earth having sex with a boy she had kissed before she died, and only thought to call her brother as an afterthought, seemed unrealistic. Although suspension of disbelief is necessary in this book to accept Susie's description of heaven and her activites there, it is an effective structural device. But allowing Susie to live again served no purpose.

The Lovely Bones depicts a heartbreaking scenario from a novel perspective. Although desperately sad it ultimately shows that time can heal almost any sadness, no matter how profound, and showing that hope can come from even the most desolate situation. Ok, enough seriousness -- if you haven't read this book yet, do it!

posted by Danya @ 9/05/2006 11:45:00 PM