The Lovely Bones: Deluxe Edition
by Alice Sebold
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alice SeboldEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-17
ISBN: 0316001821
Number of pages: 328
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780316001823
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Book Reviews of The Lovely Bones: Deluxe Edition
Book Review: I tried to hate this book, and failed.
Summary: 5 Stars
I am an ardent skeptic and Atheist and despise religion, the whole idea of it. So when I heard that one of the most popular books of my time was based on a girl living in Heaven, I was quite eager to poke fun. My pet name for this book, before finishing it, was "I was raped and murdered, but watching you poop from heaven is pretty cool." This pet title, of course, being derived from the insane and silly idea that everyone who has ever died lives in a paradise where they can infringe upon your right to privacy at will. Yeah, your dead ancestors watch you while you're grunting on the toilet.
Well, for about the first 50 pages, I held on to my hatred for the subject matter, but then I realized what the book is about. The book is not about rape and murder and Heaven, but rather about family and love and experiencing life. Rape and murder and Heaven are only the vehicles by which the author lets us experience life. By the 150th page or so, I became a pro at blocking out my snickers and scoffing at the author's belief system. Sure, the idea of an afterlife is idiotic, but the writing style and true reality depicted in the author's words are something to experience.
It is amazing and captivating to go through the mental workout and trying to comprehend the death of a child, and the ways to cope with it. The inner mental workings of a grieving, broken family are well described in this book and interesting to say the least. This book is about connection with others and with your inner self.
Some people are saying that the characters are underdeveloped, but I think they were either reading the wrong book, or must have an impossibly high standard for what "development" means. The characters are developed as well as they need to be. You are given just enough information about the inner workings of people to understand what kind of person they are. Then, if you understand the strangeness and complexity of modern life, you understand why these characters act this way or make these choices. I think you have to have a wide and detailed understanding of life on Earth to truly appreciate this book as much as I did. Some of the sequences of description play on every part of your brain, invoking sights, smells, memories, nostalgia, and the deeper mental understandings which can only be described in analogies with the most perfect of nuances. This Alice Sebold lady might believe in ghosts and an afterlife, but she understands the experience of life on Earth as well as anybody I've ever known.
If you are too smart to be wow'ed by the spooky ghosties and the afterlife in the book, do not be turned away. If anything, Alice Seybold should have just written the book from the point of view of a nameless narrator, and left out the ghosts and afterlife. Her descriptions of life on Earth are rich enough without the high-fructose corn syrup crap of human religions.
Summary of The Lovely Bones: Deluxe Edition
This deluxe trade paperback edition of Alice Sebold's modern classic features French flaps and rough-cut pages.Once in a generation a novel comes along that taps a vein of universal human experience, resonating with readers of all ages. The Lovely Bones is such a book - a phenomenal #1 bestseller celebrated at once for its narrative artistry, its luminous clarity of emotion, and its astoniishing power to lay claim to the hearts of millions of readers around the world.
"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."
???? So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on eath continue without her - her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling.
???? Out of unspeakable traged and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy
"A stunning achievement." -The New Yorker
"Deeply affecting. . . . A keenly observed portrait of familial love and how it endures and changes over time." -New York Times
"A triumphant novel. . . . It's a knockout." -Time
"Destined to become a classic in the vein of To Kill a Mockingbird. . . . I loved it." -Anna Quindlen
"A novel that is painfully fine and accomplished." -Los Angeles Times
"The Lovely Bones seems to be saying there are more important things in life on earth than retribution. Like forgiveness, like love." -Chicago Tribune?
On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey.
Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams," where "there were no teachers.... We never had to go inside except for art class.... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue."
The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years like an episode of My So-Called Afterlife. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on Earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow." Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish, and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings. --Brad Thomas Parsons
Look Inside the Motion Picture The Lovely Bones (Paramount, 2010)
(Click on each image below to see a larger view)
 Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon |  Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon |
 Mark Wahlberg as Jack Salmon |  Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon and Director Peter Jackson |
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