The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Oh, Dama. I hated this book. I will give the opening chapter its due - it was crushing, and beautiful. I went on a rant about this book in a thread a while back.

Perks said:

All the acclaim for this book came from the first chapter. Alice Sebold had a horrible experience as a young girl in real life and the account of the rape and murder of her fictional narrator is debilitating. Beyond that it's insipid and redundant. She looks down from heaven and sees that her mother is really sad. She checks on her father and - he's really sad. Her sister, coincidentally, is really sad. The boy who would have been her first boyfriend is, get this, really sad. Her parents are so sad they can't stay together. So when she notes, as years and years and years go by, that they are still Really Sad, she has to do it in two separate places. Her sister tries to get on with life, but there is pervasive sadness. Ditto with the boyfriend. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto.

Nothing happens in this book after the first chapter, but it was declared a masterpiece. People being sad is not a story. Aaaarrrrrggghh. Whew.

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And then one other niggle - there is no elbow. She mentions time and again that the dog brought back the girl's elbow and that's how her family knew what happened to her. Impossible. The elbow is a location, the juncture of three bones, not an entity to itself. A dog can bring back a kneecap. It could bring back a shoulder blade or a collarbone, even a jaw. It can't bring an elbow if it doesn't bring the arm.

How many people read that before it went to print? Grrrr.

I was very frustrated by this book. (Obviously.) But, it was probably the biggest seller if that year (2003?) so, many people found it worthwhile.

Perks said:

Oh, Dama. I hated this book. And then one other niggle - there is no elbow.

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Yes, it was idiotic and I couldn't get past a few chapters. The elbow thing was funny--to make such a basic error!

And I remember agreeing with you, completely!

Perks said:

Oh, Dama. I hated this book. I will give the opening chapter its due - it was crushing, and beautiful. I went on a rant about this book in a thread a while back.



.....
I was very frustrated by this book. (Obviously.) But, it was probably the biggest seller if that year (2003?) so, many people found it worthwhile.

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I puzzled over the elbow thing myself...
Yes, the beginnning is gripping, but the rest of the book seems to be just everybody mourning and not being able to move on.

Heaven was very disappointing. I mean, it's an interesting premise, and I'd have thought, in a literary book, there'd be some depth to her vision of what it's like there. Instead, we get a kind of gflorified earth. And why no actual meeting with God? It's like setting a book in Buckingham Palace and the MC never getting to meet the Queen.

I hated it too, though I'm often reluctant to admit it because so many people loved it. I thought it was poorly written from the admittedly startling beginning, to its cop-out conclusion.

I did read the whole thing and, while it wasn't exactly a waste of time, it wasn't exactly time well spent either.

I borrowed a copy of this from a friend. I gave it back a few weeks later.

I think I made it to chapter three before I gave up. Yes, the novel was beautifully written and had an interesting premise. The idea of a dead narrator intrigued me, as did all of the hoopla surrounding the book. I was disappointed.

I think that's when I decided to stay away from the NY Times Bestseller list. When something is put up onto a pedestal, I tend to not like the way it looks up there. It's one of the reasons I haven't read any Harry Potters books, or "The DaVinci Code."

I enjoyed it. I even queried the agent for Alice Sebold.

Elbow

The elbow didn't bother me. I assumed the dog brought back that part of the arm where the elbow is. You can bring back a kneecap, sure, but you can also bring back a knee. And you most assuredly can bring back an elbow. You can, at least, bring back something any rational person would describe as an elbow.

DamaNegra said:

Here is the amazon page for the book, in case anyone is interested in buying it or using the search inside features.

I found this book to be incredibly beautiful. It is about a girl who is killed, and is telling her story from her own heaven. It is very emotional, and illustrates a very interesting concept of love.

The only flaw I see in this is that the end just dragged. The beginning of the book was great, but the end became boring and repetitive.

Anyone else read this?? Comments??

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I loved the novel as a whole, but the last one fifth of the book did drag on, and should have been condensed into a chapter or two.

But I hate it when people say "nothing happened." Something happened in every chapter of the book, and up until, oh, four or five chapters from the end, it was something extremely meaningful.

How's that? You bring back an arm, which of course has an elbow in the middle of it. There is no "part of the arm" that can be described as the elbow that is not attched to the arm.

In which case, the dog should have brought back her arm, not her elbow. I guess Aruna, DamaNegra and I are just irrational.

Perks said:

In which case, the dog should have brought back her arm, not her elbow. I guess Aruna, DamaNegra and I are just irrational.

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It would have been funnier if the dog had brought back her lap.

Jamesaritchie said:

I loved the novel as a whole, but the last one fifth of the book did drag on, and should have been condensed into a chapter or two.

But I hate it when people say "nothing happened." Something happened in every chapter of the book, and up until, oh, four or five chapters from the end, it was something extremely meaningful.

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"Something", maybe, but something so banal I can't even remember what. Mostly it was just whining.

Even the climax was not really a climax. So she killed the perpetrater - golly gee. After how many years, decades? After that amount of time death is no punishment, especially as he didn't know who did it or why. Death happens to all of us...

His "punishment" would have been much more effective if she'd used her imagination to somehow relate it to the crime, LET HIM know - and make sure the world knew what he'd done. There is no satisfaction at all in a criminal getting off scott free, which in fact he did. I think that's what bugged me the most about this book. There was no justice.

Perks said:

There is no "part of the arm" that can be described as the elbow that is not attched to the arm.

In which case, the dog should have brought back her arm, not her elbow. I guess Aruna, DamaNegra and I are just irrational.

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You aren't irrational - you were anatomically correct. That part bugged me, too. I kept seeing the dog dragging back the humerus or the radia or the ulna. The guy didn't chop her up - so how could the dog have just the elbow? It must have been a big dog.

I just checked this out today so I could join your discussion. Man -
I'm on chapter 3; should I keep going ? Or take it back ?

Let's try this again, shall we? (I dorked up Unique's last post, because I cannot be trusted.)

I can't recommend it, except that many people liked it. I found it frustrating. And frankly, kind of irritatingly boring.

I don't know. Ask James.

aruna said:

There is no satisfaction at all in a criminal getting off scott free, which in fact he did. I think that's what bugged me the most about this book. There was no justice.

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Yes, that bugged the heck out of me, too. I mostly enjoyed the book and didn't find it boring, but as I read I kept wondering what sort of satisfying resolution could be had. Turns out there wasn't one. The criminal suffered no consequences and wasn't even proved to the world to be the killer. I'd have felt more satisfied if even Susie's body had been found. I thought that would happen in the scene where the sister and the boyfriend ended up at the site, but it didn't and things fizzled for me about there.

Perks said:

Let's try this again, shall we? (I dorked up Unique's last post, because I cannot be trusted.)

I can't recommend it, except that many people liked it. I found it frustrating. And frankly, kind of irritatingly boring.

I don't know. Ask James.

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I first read it because it was recommended to me by a reader whom I knew to be extremely discriminating and who usually rips books to pieces. He loved this one for some reason, so I guess it does have some secret appeal beyond my comprehension.
My agent also hated it. She told me at the time that all the rave reviews came because the reviewers probably never read past the first two chapters!

aruna said:

...all the rave reviews came because the reviewers probably never read past the furst two chapters!

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I'll buy that.

I'm a little further into it now - (chapter 10).

I appreciated the way Susie described that first photo she took of her mother. When she first realizes that 'mother' isn't all she is. Discovering why her father called her mother 'Ocean Eyes'.

It made me sad when her father destroyed all those ships in a bottle. It made me think of the differences in how people handle grief. Some people would have destroyed the way her father did. Others would have cherished them because they were something they had worked on together. Still others would have attached no significance to them at all.

I like the way she describes the characters feelings, especially the young teenagers. Her sister, Ray, Ruth -

Of course I could be somewhat biased. I was the same age as the characters in the same time frame the murder occurred. Our worldview was probably similar. If yours wasn't, placing the actions in context with what happened and how the characters felt might not be a good fit for you.

My .02. I'll let you know if it still feels 'familiar' when I get to the end.

aruna said:

Even the climax was not really a climax. So she killed the perpetrater - golly gee. After how many years, decades? After that amount of time death is no punishment, especially as he didn't know who did it or why. Death happens to all of us.

His "punishment" would have been much more effective if she'd used her imagination to somehow relate it to the crime, LET HIM know - and make sure the world knew what he'd done. There is no satisfaction at all in a criminal getting off scott free, which in fact he did. I think that's what bugged me the most about this book. There was no justice.

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Is that what happened--Susie killed him? It's been over a year ago since I read this, and maybe I'll have to go over that scene again, but I read his death as fate, a karmic retribution--but one that Susie didn't have anything to do with. That would be sort of disturbing if she did--being able to kill someone while you're in Heaven is not something I could fathom. Or when you said "she killed him," did you mean Alice Sebold, the author?? As for there being no justice, maybe the author is trying to be more realistic that way, because so many child molestors and murderers go unpunished.

General Joy said:

Is that what happened--Susie killed him? It's been over a year ago since I read this, and maybe I'll have to go over that scene again, but I read his death as fate, a karmic retribution--but one that Susie didn't have anything to do with. That would be sort of disturbing if she did--being able to kill someone while you're in Heaven is not something I could fathom. Or when you said "she killed him," did you mean Alice Sebold, the author?? As for there being no justice, maybe the author is trying to be more realistic that way, because so many child molestors and murderers go unpunished.

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I seem to recall that Susie did intervene in some way, I just can't remember how exactly. But even if it was the author who killed him, I don't see how it could be a karmic retribution, since it happened much, much later, and death comes to all of us sooner or later.

I'm with you GJ, I didn't feel like Susie caused it. She witnessed it, but it was doubly disappointing that he was just standing out in the woods and died by nobody's hand.

That being said, I read this over two years ago, so I only remember my impression.

I really liked it. I thought the ending was a little too mushy with all the girls in heaven going off together, blah, blah, blah. I'm Agnostic though, so maybe that has something to do with it.

I did, however, really like the book. I read it after I heard Alice Sebold interviewed on Fresh Air. I finished it in about a day and a half. Then again I generally read 2-5 books a week, so this isn't necessarily a reflection of the book being unusually great.

The part about the elbow didn't bother me. Animals eat meat and could have gnawed on her arm around the elbow section. The elbow joint, flesh, muscle, and whatever was left of the arm bones in a small hunk of arm could be, in my opinion, called an elbow. Someone's comparison to a lap however, did get me thinking: nope, I don't think the dog could've brought a lap home. I guess to me the elbow seems different.

Now that I'm a little further into it, I'm wondering when the dog could have gotten to her elbow. Didn't the man put her into a safe and throw her down a sink hole?

The man took her apart, put her in a bag, took her to his garage, put her in a safe, then paid $20 to throw his 'father's old safe' down the sink hole.

I don't know....it's still a pretty good story so I'll keep going. (Her grandmother cracks me up. I love that character because she is a character.)