The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The book made me really want to cry; I weep at everything though (Where the Red Fern Grows and The Pigman made me want to cry too). But this made me very morose and death-centered after I finished it, which is a little strange. My favorite part was definitely her brother and the Monopoly thing; I also liked the characterization they showed about her father. I didn't like the part with her friend's body, either; I thought it was a little off.

Now a movie

If anyone is interested in seeing the trailer, it is at www.lovelybones.com. It looks AMAZING, although the actor playing George Harvey looks exactly like my company's HR Manager...

I really liked the book, but the ending was just...ugh. Oh wow. No words to describe it (and I mean that in the worst possible way.)

I just read this book yesterday/today because I saw the movie preview and thought it looked interesting.

It wasn't the best book in he world, but I was actually quite satisfied with the ending. To me, the book wasn't about "catching the killer" or getting retribution. Mainly it was about how the family coped with losing someone in such a horrible, brutal way. The ending worked for me because they all found closure in some way, and Susie finally realized that her sense of closure was realizing that her death had brought out depths in everyone that would not have been plumbed any other way - and that her family managed to find some degree of good because of her absence. I also thought the sex scene at the end was interesting because it was unexpected. I really thought she'd go get her killer, but I thought it showed her growth as a character that she wasn't focused on revenge anymore; mainly she wanted a positive experience with love so that she could get over the negative one.

The middle of the book really dragged for me, though. Fortunately it was a quick read so I'm not super irritated. One thing that really bugged me was the fact that there were soooo many characters and she didn't identify them well, so I kept getting minor people mixed up.

Actually, I also just read The Shack (which is about a man whose daughter is kidnapped and killed). These two books complimented each other in interesting ways, since they dealt with similar themes.

I had high hopes for this book... but was rather disappointed. I enjoyed the first half, but the second half took a whole lot of determination (and a lot of hoping it would improve) to plow through.

My opinion only...

JoNightshade said:

I just read this book yesterday/today because I saw the movie preview and thought it looked interesting.

It wasn't the best book in he world, but I was actually quite satisfied with the ending. To me, the book wasn't about "catching the killer" or getting retribution. Mainly it was about how the family coped with losing someone in such a horrible, brutal way. The ending worked for me because they all found closure in some way, and Susie finally realized that her sense of closure was realizing that her death had brought out depths in everyone that would not have been plumbed any other way - and that her family managed to find some degree of good because of her absence. I also thought the sex scene at the end was interesting because it was unexpected. I really thought she'd go get her killer, but I thought it showed her growth as a character that she wasn't focused on revenge anymore; mainly she wanted a positive experience with love so that she could get over the negative one.

The middle of the book really dragged for me, though. Fortunately it was a quick read so I'm not super irritated. One thing that really bugged me was the fact that there were soooo many characters and she didn't identify them well, so I kept getting minor people mixed up.

Actually, I also just read The Shack (which is about a man whose daughter is kidnapped and killed). These two books complimented each other in interesting ways, since they dealt with similar themes.

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I totally agree that I liked the ending... I think making the ending 'satisfying' only would have made it more boring... it was the lingering feeling of 'what the hell?!' that made me like the book. I like books that bring out emotions and inner turmoil and take you to where you DON'T expect to go. I honestly would have been more dissapointed and less likely to remember the book at all had it been all fulfilling and stuff.

And I agree, The Shack has some similar themes to this, although I felt as though The Shack had a much better resolution at the end than this book.

I guess I just felt like this book was a good read for someone who had already lost a family member, as it shows the family from a 3rd perspective and helps one realize just how difficult it must be to not only be the survivor, but how difficult it WOULD be on the person who has passed if they had to watch the family and not be able to comfort them. I lost my brother and to think of how he must have looked at our family after he was gone and everything my parents went through... well. It was very ... I guess it just spoke to me cause I could relate? I think books like this don't really sit well with people unless there is a personal connection to them, ya know?

I didn't know they were making a movie from this book. That should be interesting. I thought the ending was perfect. I really liked this book. I thought that the author's style was lacking sometimes, and I agree that the middle sagged a bit, but overall, I thought it was unique and well-written and heartbreaking.

i too cannot recommend it. based on the merit of that work, i have not looked into more of her writing. i cant say that the book was poorly written so much as confess that i didnt enjoy the writing past most of the first chapter. i did not give up on the book, as i seldom give up on books, but it was certainly more toward the summer popular beach reads section and i am more into literary works with powerful conflicts and harsh prose. but then, i'm willing to bet the majority of the fans of this book probably disliked cormac mccarthy's "the road" to at least some degree and that's one of the best books i've experienced in the past four years or so..

I loved the book. Well written and well executed. The characters and aftermath were all very real, compelling, and plausible.

I didn't get wrapped around the axel on the elbow thing. It seemed clear to me that he cut her up to get her out of the hidey hole without drawing attention, and to fit her into the safe. Remember that the safe was small enough that he managed to load it into his car himself. He only accepted help when it was offered at the dump site. If you cut an arm mid-bicept and mid-forearm, I would call the piece in the middle the elbow - certainly not an arm since most of the arm was missing. And if you transported the pieces bagload by bagload in the dark of night without a flashlight to draw attention, it's totally plausible that a piece might drop from the bag unnoticed (not that this has happened to me).

As for the icicle. I assumed Susie managed to cause it to happen. There was a mention earlier in the book about a camp her sister attended where the kids were deciding on the pefect murder weapon. They decided on the icicle as it would melt away afterwards without a trace. And then years later . . .

I read The Lovely Bones several years ago as an assignment for a class I was taking. We were expected to write down examples of good writing--well-written similes, diction, etc. So, although I did read for the story, I was mainly focusing on the craft. I remember writing down many examples of spot-on imagery.

The one thing about the story that made me wonder was that ghost scene, mainly because, as someone else mentioned, it was so reminiscent of the movie "Ghost." I hated the scene in the book; it just did not fit the rest of the story. The scene in the movie is powerful. What a difference. Am I the only one who wondered if Sebold was not stealing the idea just a bit? I'm surprised the scene made it past the editors.

The elbow issue is interesting, too. (Also disconcerting for me, since I never even thought of the oddness of it all. I guess I was too engrossed in finding similes.)

Pardon my zombie thread resurrection ...

JoNightshade said:

One thing that really bugged me was the fact that there were soooo many characters and she didn't identify them well, so I kept getting minor people mixed up.

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That's what bothered me most, too. She'd toss a name out there and I'd have to cogitate on who that was. There were way too many named minor characters to keep track of.

I read the scene where she used Ruth's body to have sex with Ray as a possession. Aside from the strange-squickiness of it, it struck a sour note because it shattered the story's premise: she can witness the living but she can't act on the living world. That is the whole point of the snowglobe in the beginning, right? She's trapped in heaven. It's nice, but she's trapped there by an invisible barrier. Likewise, I think, is the metaphor in her father's ships in bottles. They are in, and they can't get out. By letting Suzie out (via Ruth's willingness to be possessed), the author destroys her own premise.

The biggest problem with that is she can't possess someone in order to stop George Harvey from murdering little girls, but she can possess someone to have sex with her teenage crush? Super! And Ruth, I think, would have preferred to have been used by possession in order to stop George Harvey, but instead she gets to sleep through a sex act with someone she otherwise would not have had sex with.

Then there was the troubling theological issue of possession/heaven. Possession is generally considered the purview of the damned, is it not? It doesn't make a lot of sense to have an angel possess someone, especially not for sex.

And I too was frustrated that she didn't tell Ray who did it, or where her body was.

As far as the sex itself, though, I'm always bugged by all of the compulsive showering some writers tend to have their characters do before and after sex scenes. What is the point of Suzie-Ruth's heading for the shower immediately after propositioning Ray, and Ray jumping up to scour away any trace of his tryst with Suzie-Ruth?