Lovely Bones

by Sebold

[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

14 year old Susie Salmon, like the fish, is raped and brutally murder on December 6, 1973 after taking a shortcut home from school. The remainder of The Lovely Bones is told from Susie's view point while looking down on her family from heaven, watching them cope with their loss, while her killer roams free a few houses down from them.

In Susie's Heaven they play a game called "the perfect murder" very similar to the board game "Clue" {Professor Plum, in the study, with the revolver} Susie always chooses the icicle as her weapon of choice because it melts away; this is ironic and most probably intentional because both Susie's body and her killer dissolve leaving only a small puddle of evidence behind.

I actually read this several years ago after it first came out, but was very hesitant at first because of the subject matter. Do I really want to read about a 14 year old getting raped and murdered? Especially since I was only a few years older than Susie at the time. But, as I did this time as well, I ended up loving it. The thing I was most worried about was the explicit detail of the crime, when in fact while Alice Sebold gave the reader enough information to get a good picture of the act left the more gruesome parts to your imagination having the focus of the book be about solving the crime and her family and friends coping with their grief.

The Lovely Bones reflects on almost ten years after the murder with both the dead and undead dealing with this transition they have been given; and because of the longevity of the book grew a strong attachment to the characters. Ray, Susie's first boyfriend who has difficulty getting over his first love becoming the "loner type" to her younger brother Buckley, who was to young to comprehend what was going on and now becomes frustrated with his parent's lack of ability to let go of his big sister, and Susie's sister Lindsey who walks around known as "the dead girl's sister. This is truly a heart wrenching, moving book, but in the end proves that life does go on.