The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Lovely Bones
Book Review: Beautifully crafted unique book
Summary: 5 Stars
What makes this book so different is its focus on the aftermath of a murder from the view point of those affected. In a world where we focus rarely on the victim and the huge affects a life altering tragedy can have as it ripples through the fabric of the lives involved. The characters are so well constructed that it makes the book come alive. The emphatic Ruth is so clearly modeled after author. The actions of the murder are only tangential to the book. Highly recommend this book.Book Review: Beautifully, and Frankly, Written Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Loved it. Unpredictable and honest. The reactions of the characters to Susie's death were real. Susie herself was a realistic and honest narrator. The author captures human emotion and makes these characters and the chaos surrounding them so believeable that you'll find yourself thinking about the novel's events as non-fiction. I cried more than I'd like to admit and plan on re-reading it soon.Book Review: Best book ever
Summary: 5 Stars
Sebold, Alice. THE LOVELY BONES. New York: LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY.2002.328
Lovely Bones is a book that makes the reader think "what if that was to happen to me?" "What if I were to be raped and killed right near my home? How long would it take my parents to find my dead body?" This book is narrated by the main character Susie Salmon, who is already in heaven and is telling the story from a strange new place. Susie a fourteen- year- old girl who was raped and killed is in heaven looking down to see that the marriage of her parents is falling apart following her death. She's watching her sister struggling to stay strong and her little brother trying to understand what the word gone means. While she's up in heaven she is able to see her loved ones who like her, have passed away. Susie is also able to see how much people really loved her. There are a lot of strange things that go on in the book that only by reading the book you will be able to understand them.
I really recommend this book to all readers who sometimes wonder how it is to look down from heaven and see how the family you love is falling apart or maybe it's closer to each other than ever. This is a book that when Susie feels happy you feel happy too. When Susie feels sad it makes you feel so sad and even cry. It's a book that's full of mixed emotions and tragedy. It's a book that as soon as you start reading the book you will not want to stop reading it. So go ahead and give THE LOVELY BONES a chance and prepare yourself to witness a life full of emotions and horrible tragedies.
Book Review: Bleak, unrealistic and dare I say it?--Unlovely.
Summary: 2 Stars
Like most other negative reviewers here, the main thing that drew me to The Lovely Bones was the hype. When one sees book-reviewing heavyweights like the New York Times giving a work of fiction unequivocal raves, you expect it to be good. Really, really good. Perhaps it was my elevated expectations of the novel that made it such a huge disappointment for me. Or the natural resentment any human would bear a book after hearing it called "a painfully fine literary accomplishment" 180 times. In any case, I found myself extremely bored, annoyed and frustrated after about the first 100 pages or so, having not formed any emotional investment in any of the characters whatsoever.
The Lovely Bones deals with a very gruesome and horrifying subject matter--(and I might add exploits this horrible subject matter shamelessly for pulling cheap emotional strings--but that's beside the point) the brutal rape and murder of a sweet fourteen-year old girl--which is enumerated in extremely graphic and sometimes nauseating detail in the first few pages (talk about a rude introduction). The premise is a rather interesting one--Susie, the murdered girl watches her family and friends deal with her death helplessly, and occasionally when she wants to enough is able to influence their actions. This could make for a wonderful novel--simple, compelling, sweet, hopeful. Sebold, however turns the story into something that is drab, depressing and absolutely unreadable after the first few chapters. Now, I understand that a novel which features a young girl being raped and cut into little pieces in the first chapter is not going to be all sunshine and kitties. But there is still just so much gloominess and depression one can take from one book. The outlook of The Lovely Bones from page 1 is not one of hope and tenderness, as the reviews promise but of death, depression and the sytematic and painful unravelling of a family. The last page leaves you just as gloomy and hopeless as you felt during the rape scene.
The bleak outlook aside, the other thing that made The Lovely Bones so unbearable were the characters. Susie, the narrator was likable enough and Mr. Salmon was heartbreaking and realistic as the desperate father, unwilling to let go but there were some serious kinks in all the other characterizations. Particularly Mrs. Salmon--her lack of response to the news of her daughter's death was suspicious but her affair with the detective investigating it was disgusting and gratuitous and her leaving her shattered family and her two young children behind was not only repulsive and unlikely but....weird... What mother alive would do something like that--leave her children (including a toddler son) and her husband, still reeling from the loss of his daughter to work in a winery in California? Buckley's response to her when she came back was utterly appropriate (Buckley at many points in the novel seemed like the only sane character). And finally, the oft-mentioned Ruth/Ray/Susie sex scene. All I could say after that scene was: Whaaat?!?! A murdered girl who mentally and emotionally is still fourteen years old is given the chance to return to Earth and instead of comforting her broken family or telling the police the identity of her murderer chooses to have sex with a junior high crush she barely knew--and while using another girl's body? What makes this even more bizarre is the fact that Susie's only sexual experience was an unthinkably brutal rape. Would she have recovered so fully that she could have rewarding, normal adult sex with a man? Also, the prevalence of relationships formed in early adolescence that last forever--what is up with that? How likely is it for a girl to marry and have the children of a boy she dated when she was 13? There are just too many parts of The Lovely Bones that don't add up or make any sense at all.
Polar Bear
Book Review: Bones Of Contention
Summary: 1 Stars
In other reviews of this novel, I have read the word 'literature'. Anyone who thinks that Lovely Bones is literature must be either braindead, or taking a university course staged by Opra Winfrey's Book Club. Think of literature shot through the lens of a bad telemovie, and you are coming close to what Lovely Bones is in reality. Anyone who reads books even remotely challenging will be able to tell you this.The idea is interesting: that a girl is murdered and looks down upon her family and friends, and watches how they react to that murder. The way in which this idea is executed, though, is moronic. It is soaked in sentimentality, cliche, and injected with great doses of kitsch. Reading Lovely Bones I felt as if I were sucking on a terribly sugary sweet, and I kept wanting to spit it out, which is what I did in the end. That is to say, I couldn't bring myself to finish it.
The fact that Lovely Bones was so popular in the United States can be accepted. Bestselling books, after all, are mostly bad. But that readers think of this as literature is a testament to how far down the track of illiteracy we have all come.
By the way, I'm astonished that the author of 'The Corrections' wrote a good review of this book. My copy has a fragment taken from something he wrote, on the front cover. To quote, 'Sebold has given us a fantasy-fable of great authority, charm, and daring.' Did Franzen and I read the same book? Has Franzen lost his marbles? Did Franzen really write The Corrections?!?! If yes, how could he think Lovely Bones is good? I'm puzzled (and somewhat disturbed).
Undoubtedly this novel will be made into an equally sugary film. I can imagine it as a sort of American Beauty Lite. Undoubtedly, there will also be people who will think that Lovely Bones The Movie is an art film. Undoubtedly, they will be wrong.