The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold
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Book Reviews of The Lovely Bones
Book Review: english assignment review
Summary: 5 Stars
The novel The Lovely Bones is written in 1st person point of view. The author was trying to convince the reader of something dramatizing, when Susie Salmon was raped and killed. The general genre of this novel is drama. The book fits in to this because it creates suspense while the family is looking for her murderer, yet Susie can see them from heaven. The book also creates sadness by letting you into the families pain of losing their daughter. The intended audience I think would be for young teens to adults, no one younger than 13 should read this novel because of its realistic situations and heartache. The authors style is informal because it is a young girl of 14 talking to the reader throughout the novel. The writing style of the novel is outstanding. It is very different from any other book I have ever read, and it really makes you appreciate what and who you have in life. It suites the intended audience very well. The book affected me by making me more aware of the world around me. It made me appreciate people more, it shows you not to take anyone for granted. I personally love this novel, it has been the best book I have read so far. I don't think that anything was changed, abandoned, or reinforced from my ideas. The novel isn't really related to my own life or personal agenda. The most it relates to me is that it is a young girl who loves her family. I haven't had any personal experiences in my life relate to this subject, and I hope that I never do. I would definitely recommend this book to others. It is very inspiring and heartfelt. I think all young girls should read it, it makes you aware of what you have around you in the world and how fast it can all be taken away.
The author Alice Sebold has tried to pull the reader in with a very dramatic novel. She grabs the readers attention by starting out with a world that is unfamiliar. The young girl, Susie Salmon, is trapped in heaven and is watching as her family unfolds the mystery of her murder. Alice Sebold has succeeded very well at making her point towards the reader. The novel is gripping due to the fact that how her family struggles to stick together through the very hard time of losing their first born child, Susie Salmon. Alice Sebold accomplishes getting her point to the reader by she wants the beginning to have a lot of suspense, and give you hope throughout the book. There is hope for Susie Salmon's family to figure out who murdered her, and during this time it destroys her family. While the family is going through very hard times they still never give up on their daughter. The ending ties everything together greatly. Reading this novel can change your entire outlook on life.
Book Review: NOT SO LOVELY
Summary: 2 Stars
I shall review the book with a list of positives and negatives. Unfortunately, I can name only one positive.
POSITIVE
The story begins like a murder mystery, albeit told by the victim, Susie Salmon, who is in heaven. It held my interest almost to the end. How would the murderer be discovered? Would the victim, looking down from her heaven, lead the guilty to his judgment?
NEGATIVE
1) I read the chapters quickly, expecting a twist or a turn with a plausible ending typical of a good murder mystery. Only in the last couple of chapters, after much anticipation, does it become apparent that Sebold did not intend the book to read as a mystery. Her goal, as I see it, was to portray how, after a devastating and horrific event occurs within a family, relationships go awry and the family becomes dysfunctional - a skeletal form of its once normal body left pathetic with missing parts; yet somehow, guided by the celestial Susie, there is recovery, and normalcy is regained. And so, the skeletal form is healed - voila, "lovely bones." How misleading! 300 pp of "mystery" is tossed away as if it never happened!
2) Sebold rambles on excessively and unnecessarily about simple events and thoughts. Skip some paragraphs and not miss a thing.
3) Sebold's writing lacks originality.
a) Susie's father's absolute certainty that Mr. Harvey is the killer is based on no real evidence, only on flawed assumptions. Harvey acts weird, looks weird, never socializes, builds spooky things, looks guilty! On that basis, I suppose we all could condemn a number of innocent people to the electric chair.
b) Susie inhabits Ruth's body to make love to Ray. Is that original? Absolutely not. You need only think of the movie, GHOST, which was filmed long before Sebold's book was published. GHOST stirred favorable emotions within me. "Unchained Melody" still rings in my heart. But this copy-cat scene left me frowning and groaning.
c) Sebold devotes chapter after chapter to the misdeeds and sins of the murderer. Yet, his end, though "icy," is abrupt and benign. No remorse. No justice served. Okay, many real-life murderers do get away with it and probably meet a normal death. But they have no Susies in heaven to watch them and to relate their stories.
CONCLUSION
The book is easy to read. It was praised by many and achieved best-seller status for many months. It is yet another example or proof that popularity of a book does not necessarily equate literary merit. I read the book for a discussion group. I suspect my disappointment with the book shall be a minority view.
Book Review: An excessively grusome story of family loss
Summary: 3 Stars
With over 2500 reviews already, it is hard to add something meaningful to the evaluation of this book but hopefully some people will find the following useful.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold is a difficult book to read with any enjoyment. The thing that mars the book for me is the way in which the young girl who narrates the story from heaven, Susie Salmon, is killed. She is brutally raped and murdered and then her body is dismembered by a sadistic neighbor who is not immediately apprehended and who consequently haunts the book with his presence. In my view it was not necessary to the basic theme of the book--dealing with loss--for Susie to die in this fashion. A more ordinary death--accident, illness--would have served the author's purpose just as well. Thus it seems an unnecssary bit of sick sensatonalism to have her die in such a gruesome manner.
As I started to read the various responses of the family to Susie's death I was reminded of the opening lines of Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Clearly the Salmon family has a right to be unhappy., but one wonders about the impact the death has on them, particularly, Jack the father. The death of one's child is perhaps the greatest sorrow one has to face in life, yet Jack Salmon had two other children and should have remained strong for their sake. In a family that is fundamentally happy and strong, such would have been the case. Thus the way the family comes apart is indicative of a fundamental flaw in its makeup. The one member who comes across as the strongest is a bit of an outsider--Grandma Lynn.
The strength of the book is in the matter-of-fact teen age tone that Sebold is able to give to Susie. She is able to comment on the events that occur on earth with that still-innocent manner of a young girl who despite experiencing the ultimate tragedy and despite being unable to impact what happens to the living remains optimistic. It is the response of Susie's friends and peers that comes across as most appropriate and realistic, while that of the family seems more stereotypical.
The comments on the back cover (from Time magazine's review of the book) may best describe the book: It is, above all, a novel which finds light in the darkest of places, and shows how even when that light seems to be utterly extinguished, it is still there, waiting to be rekindled." If you can see the book from this perspective it can have meaning for you.
Book Review: Moving Novel About Love and Loss
Summary: 4 Stars
After fourteen year old Susie Salmon is raped and murdered, she goes to heaven where she is able to look down at her family and friends and the rest of the world. As she is adjusting to life in heaven and making friends there, she is also watching her family deal with her disappearance. She watches as both her parents struggle to accept the fact that she is gone and the affect it has on their marriage; she watches her younger sister Lindsay grow and become stronger as a person; and she watches her little brother Buckley, who is too young to understand what is going on. She also watches her friends Ray Singh and Ruth Connors, as they grow closer after Susie's death. As Susie watches her family and friends grow older and mature, she begins to realize how much she has lost and longs for one more chance for life on earth.
"The Lovely Bones" is a sad, moving, and at times odd novel. Extremely well written by Alice Sebold, it is told in the first person by Susie. This unique perspective means that we not only have insight into what Susie was like as a person, but who her killer was and how frustrating it is for her to not only watch the killer stalk other victims (including someone close to Susie) but watch the police try and find her body and determine who her killer is and prove it. Her ability to look down from heaven to see her family and others (and somehow be privy to their thoughts) adds poignancy to the novel, as each of her family members and friends struggle to cope with their loss in their own private ways. It is heartbreaking to read about how Susie's disappearance and the inability of the police to find her body affects her parents marriage, and how Susie begins to realize she didn't know them, especially her mother, all that well. It's equally heartbreaking to see Susie watch her sister Lindsay grow up and experience things that Susie never will, especially falling in love and having sex for the first time. Sebold makes the characters so believable that at times I wanted to hug them and say "I'm sorry" and at other times I wanted to shake them and make them aware of how their actions were hurting others. Although the book is sad, it's not as depressing as I thought it would be and there are some humorous moments in the book, mostly with Susie's Grandma Lynn. While I thought "The Lovely Bones" was well written for the most part, there was a truly odd section towards the end that felt out of place in the book.
"The Lovely Bones" is a moving novel about love and loss.
Book Review: ignore the ending and the rest of the book is great
Summary: 4 Stars
I hardly ever read books when they are first released. I always seem to be a few years behind, for whatever reason. Sometimes this works to my advantage, as it allows me to avoid a degree of hype that surrounds certain books. I do remember seeing the blue cover of The Lovely Bones on shelves in every bookstore when it was released a few years ago and seeing mentions on best-sellers lists. But I didn't take much interest in it because, sometimes, when a book/movie/album gets so many rave reviews, I'll expect it to blow me through the roof and will end up disappointed when it's only mildly entertaining or moving (see: The Time Traveler's Wife).
I prefer to go in with low expectations and let myself be surprised with greatness. Not that I'm a bitter person or anything. Not at all. Ok, I'm working on it.
Anyway, I was visiting my tiny local library for the first time, searching for a book to check out, when I saw the blue spine peaking out from the shelf. Since I had already read the few classics they had in stock, and don't really go for Harlequin romance, I took Alice Sebold home with me. Much to my surprise, I finished the book in a day's time.
It wasn't so much Sebold's writing style, which is good but not spectacular, or even the tinges of mystery in the plot that captivated me. It was the raw human emotion that she so perfectly conveyed through each character. The characters felt real--both their positive qualities and their shortcomings. The pain, confusion, regret, and maybe even hope that they each felt in their own ways really impacted me.
The Lovely Bones is the story of a young girl who is raped and murdered in her neighborhood. She speaks to the reader from her version of heaven (it can be different for each person), and looks over her family as they unravel after the tragic event. Perhaps it had something to do with my already delicate state (I was home sick while reading) but the book managed to make me cry. More than once. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that, and the book snob in me would prefer to believe I am "above" sentimental plot devices, but to be honest--the book is just really sad.
I also liked the subtle message of hope that carries through the novel, without reading like a "Chicken Soup" book. The ending isn't the overly hokey "I will survive" type, and still has a shade of melancholy, but seems to say that even through utter grief and personal devastation, life goes on.