The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold
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Book Reviews of The Lovely Bones
Book Review: The Lovely Bones
Summary: 5 Stars
14 year-old Susie never expected her life to come to an end on that cold December night. Nor did she expect her killer to be the quiet man that lived right next door. All she knew was that she was now in the unfamiliar, lonesome place called Heaven, watching everyone below cope with her untimely death.
Susie was walking home from school, taking a short cut through a cornfield when Mr. Harvey startled her. He lured her into his underground hideout, and then proceeded to killing her. When she finds herself in Heaven, Susie is frustrated at how she can't comfort her family and let them know she's okay.
For years after her death Susie is forced to watch her torn family fall apart. Her sister pushes everyone away except for her sweet boyfriend Samuel, her younger brother Buckley finally realizes that death means never coming home, her father copes with losing his firstborn, and her mother has to accept her daughter's death.
But through it all everyone gains the strength and will to move on, and in everyone's heart, Susie is still very much alive.
"You don't notice the dead living when they really choose to leave you. You're not meant to. At most you feel them as a whisper or the wave of a whisper undulating down. I would compare it to a woman in the back of a lecture hall or theater whom no on notices until she slips out. Then only those near the door themselves notice; to the rest it is like an unexplained breeze in a closed room."
"Inside the snow globe on my father's desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf. When I was little my father would pull me into his lap and reach for the snow globe. He would turn it over, letting all the snow collect on the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, `Don't worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He's trapped in a perfect world.' "
Book Review: One of the best I've read.
Summary: 5 Stars
When asked what this book is about I have answered: It's about a little girl who's raped and murdered.
And people get shocked. How in the world can such a horrific plot be something you recommend.
Because I do. It is hard to imagine that such a tale could be beautiful and touching. A page-turner that one simply has to finish at one go yet when one does it's with a sigh of regret that you put it down.
Alice Sebold is proven herself to be a master of story-telling by writing this remarkable, unique book. She takes a subject that is appalling in reality and spins with her magic pen a tale that holds you captive until she gently put down on the ground again.
The text flows beautifully, effortlessy across the pages and one always is thirsty for more.
The story itself is so original. A little girl is raped, then killed and after that watches her family from above, to see what happens to them. How the tragedy affects them and how they deal with it, each in his or her own way.
The characters are always believable and always real. After a while one starts to feel you know these people and you feel deeply for them and for the little girl. You feel so angry, betrayed and outraged over the tragedy that you could scream! And then you want to cry. Unsurprisingly, there were many tears shed over this book though not all in sorrow. Because there is, in spite of everything, joy to found on these pages. There are victories, big and small and when they come you share those feelings that come along with them.
The author did a fine job of creating a good setting, she doesn't go into much detail but leaves a lot up to the reader which is good in my opinion. Not too much and not too little.
After I had read the book the story stayed with me for a long time. It is without a doubt one of the most memorable and best books I have ever read.
I can't recommend this book strongly enough. It is simply extraordinary.
Book Review: Disappointed...don't believe the hype...
Summary: 2 Stars
Just finished it a few minutes to go. I find myself wondering what I've done with my time. I selected this one because of the overwhelming number of positive reviews. Reader's calling it "the best book they'd ever read" and "favorite of all time." So, I'll begin with the positive. The story is told from an unusual narrational vantage point. This made me very enthusiastic in the beginning of the read. However, the creativity stops there. Seriously, that's it.
On to the negative...Im not sure that there was enough support given to explain the relationship between some of the characters. I found myself repeatedly wondering how/why certain insignificant characters kept being looped back into the story. Case in point, Samuel's brother, Hal. What was the point of him? For most of the story I thought of Hal and Samuel as a joint character and both light and insignificant. I digress...
More to the point...the middle of this story really caught some drag. I found it to be very boring. I only finished it because of the wonderful reviews from gracious readers. I just knew it had to pick up!
When the conclusion of the story finally arrived it came in the form of a cheap grand finally. I'm aware that it may be idiotic to complain that a fictional story lacks logic. But I must say that the resolution of this book was very illogical. The final happenings seemed very abrupt and, I felt over-all, cheapened the story. The writing became vague in detail and what there was to make sense of was really out there like a bad twilight zone episode. Before you know it, it's all over and you are being cutely dismissed. (You'll know what I mean when you get there.) In the final words I couldn't shake the personal thought that the story wasn't well structured. The subject matter was unevenly spread. Im sorry I was not able to agree with the majority the reviewers. It started out with an interesting notion but over all I found it disappointing.
Book Review: Okay, well, this was depressing.
Summary: 2 Stars
I got Sebold's The Lovely Bones as a birthday gift from my sister. Normally, our tastes in most things are pretty similar. She read it and couldn't put it down.
I'm not having that trouble.
I seem to be putting it down a lot. One or two pages read, then slap it goes on the coffee table, and I walk around, stewing in this nasty, depressed stupor for the next few hours.
The story is told in retrospect (as you may have already read from the other reviews posted here), narrated by the main character, Susie Salmon, a fourteen year old girl, after she is raped and brutally murdered by a seemingly benign neighbor/serial killer, circa 1973. After her murder, Susie keeps watch over her family from her own little slice of heaven as they learn of her death and begin to unravel.
I've made it about thirty pages in. Can I slit my wrists now? Or do I have to wait until I finish this thing?
Only thirty pages. Not all that much, if the truth be told, to judge an entire book by. There have been subtle flashes of humor and a there's a strange sweetness, almost a gentle touch to the writing that lies just beneath the morbid subject, a feeling that a male author probably could not have hoped to accomplish. But still, there's this melodramatic, after school special thing going on, and some of the prose is so...flowery and...
High school lit. That's what I keep thinking...a lonely girl dressed in black, writing poetry in her room at three in the morning...
Someone told me this has become required reading in schools, and my copy has a multitude of reading circle questions listed in the back of the book. I'm only thirty pages in, but still, with each page I turn I get more and more depressed. Maybe it's the fact that I've got a pre-teen daughter, and this is more than I can handle - or want to.
But hey, it was free. And now I feel committed. So once again, I struggle on...
Book Review: The Lovely Bones a Story From Up Above
Summary: 4 Stars
The Lovely Bones
By: Alice Seabold
352 Pages
Back Bay Books $13.99 (paperback)
(Young Adult)
By: Jessie Ann Bolash
Alice Seabold is trying to speak out to all of the rape victims in the world today. In The Lovely Bones she is showing how much rape can affect a family and many people close to the victim's family. She is also telling a fictional story based of the story of a girl that got raped and killed by the same man who raped Alice Seabold during her freshman year of college.
The author of The Lovely Bones lived though her horrible experience and is now married to author Glen David Gold. After being raped Alice went through difficult times with drugs and court battles. These horrific experiences that no one should ever have to endure motivated her to write about a rape that did not turn out as lucky as hers did. Today, Alice lives a close to normal life with her husband trying to forget about the unhappy memories that haunt her.
Even though the book is dark and not the happiest story ever written, Alice Seabold gets her message across clearly. She does this by letting Suzie Salmon, the girl that was raped, tell her story from heaven. In heaven Suzie watches her family and friends wonder and deal with her death. Suzie watches her family fall apart right before her eyes. Many victim's families have a hard time dealing with the question, Why her?
Many times in the book there is very detailed descriptions of people Suzie knew and now knows in heaven. If a person who likes having a picture painted in their mind down to the very last detail read this book they would love it. It paints mental images very well because the great detail. To other people who are looking for action every second, they may be bored for a little while. This is until the action comes. This book portrays a wonderful courageous story of a perfectly normal girl that had her life taken from her in a matter of minutes.