Book Review | The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

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Rating

4 stars – an intriguing book told through the eyes of a murder victim

Description

Sebold’s first novel after her memoir, Lucky is a small but far from minor miracle. Sebold has taken a grim, media-exploited subject and fashioned from it a story that is both tragic and full of light and grace.

Why did you choose to read this book?

The Lovely Bones has been sitting on my TBR shelf for many a year – I’d pretty much forgotten I had it – and then I woke up one morning and realised someone had mentioned it to me in my dream (sounds corny but true) so I picked it up and decided to read it.

The Book Review

This book is narrated by Susie Salmon, and one of the first things she explains is: “I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.” As she walks home from school one winter evening Susie is lured into a dangerous situation by a neighbour, Mr Harvey – and doesn’t live to tell the tale.

Through the course of the novel we learn about Susie’s Heaven – where everything she ever longed for appears, and where she can sit in a pagoda and watch her family as their lives continue down on earth and they try to come to terms with Susie’s disappearance.

Sebold has a beautiful way with words – she covers the subject of a child’s disappearance and the effects it has on those closest to her with compassion and insight.

It had begun to snow outside. It was the first snow since my death, and this was not lost on my father.

“I can hear you honey,” he said to me, even though I wasn’t talking. “What is it?”

I focused very hard on the dead geranium in his line of vision. I thought if I could make it bloom he would have his answer. In my heaven it bloomed. In my heaven geranium petals swirled in eddies up to my waist. On Earth nothing happened.

But through the snow I noticed this: my father was looking toward the green house in a new way. He had begun to wonder.

I read this book over a period of days – and found it to be so realistic that one day I heard a news report about a missing girl – and instantly thought – I wonder if they found Susie – then remembered it was only a book!

I’m glad I finally got around to reading The Lovely Bones – it really is a beautiful story. I had to give it 4 stars rather than 5 as I was slightly annoyed by something that happened towards the end of the book – that stretched me too far past the boundaries of what I could believe – but don’t let this put you off.

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