The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones

by Alice Sebold

'My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer.'This is Susie Salmon, speaking to us from heaven. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. There are counsellors to help newcomers to adjust, and friends to room with. Everything she wants appears as soon as she thinks of it - except the thing she wants most: to be back with the people she loved on Earth. From heaven, Susie watches. She sees her happy suburban family implode after her death, as each member tries to come to terms with the terrible loss. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet.The Lovely Bones is a luminous and astonishing novel about life and death, forgiveness and vengeance, memory and forgetting. 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. 'Sebold has given us a fantasy-fable of great authority, charm, and daring. She's a one-of-a-kind writer' Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections. 'Painfully funny, bracingly tough, terribly sad, it is a feat of imagination and a tribute to the healing power of grief' Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay.

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Reviewed by thepunktheory on

3 of 5 stars

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Book vs. Movie:
Let me begin with Alice Sebold's novel. When I began to read I was immediately pulled in. The story is fascinating and terrifying. I have to admit there were tears in my eyes a few times. The most heart breaking part is how relatable every aspect is. Susie is your average teenage girl, when she's killed it really could have been anybody you know.
But - there always has to be a "but" right? - about 2/3 through the book it lost its grip. At that point we are busy following everybody's life many years after Susie died and many of those lives are so very boring, uninspired and filled with clichés. All of sudden there was nothing fascinating or thrilling about the story. To be honest the last 1/3 seemed to drag on for far longer the rest of the book. It would have been much better just simply let the novel end at some earlier point!
So, let's move on to the adaptation. I'm going to make it simple: the film is a huge let-down. While Peter Jackson usually delivers on point, and additionally we get nothing but Hollywood's finest actors, the movie is nothing but pretty pictures. None of the actors get to show their full potential and the story on-screen has no depth at all. The scenes about Susie's heaven seem to be there for nothing but showing off CGI effects. There is actually nothing there to even justify the existence of those scenes. The moments we spend with Susie's family on the other hand fail to produce emotion. While the book was really intense, the movie doesn't go under your skin at all. Combined with Susan Sarandon's rather comic scenes the atmosphere was completely destroyed.
On top of that the movie is far too long. With more than 2 hours to watch I caught myself several times wondering when it'll finally be over.

Summing up, the novel is definitely better than the adaptation. The movie is nothing but pretty pictures and really not worth the time. Although Alice Sebold's book is more intense, I would have expected more after I read so many positive reviews.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 14 November, 2016: Finished reading
  • 14 November, 2016: Reviewed