The Lovely Bones

At age fourteen, Susie Salmon is brutally raped, murdered, and dismembered by a neighbor. Although this may sound like the beginning of a horror story or a thriller, The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, turns a horrendous crime into a story about the emotional journey both Susie, her family, and friends experience. Susie narrates her story from heaven, which she now resides in after her death. We soon find out that this heaven is unlike the heaven we often imagine, this heaven is anything that you want it to be. Susie's heaven appears to be her school play ground and anything that she desires magically appears before her eyes. However, her heaven can never be the one thing Susie would love to have; the life she used to live.

Susie looks down upon her family from heaven, and watches them pick up the pieces of this horrific murder. We watch the separation of her parents, the daring journey her father makes to find the killer, her younger sister build massive walls to become stronger, and her younger brother attempt to understand what the word "gone" truly means. We also see how a young girl deals with having all that is looked forward to ripped away from her in a single moment. Susie misses out and is robbed of experiences that most may take for granted.

The Lovely Bones portrays the emotional and tolling journey a devastating experience like this takes on a family, and a community. The reader experiences the grieving process alongside the family, and watches as the family tries to rebuild itself after a horrible loss. The book is relevant for most people, because it focuses on material that almost everyone experiences...death. All the while children at school are speculating what exactly happened to her, while her murderer is feverishly trying to cover his tracks. Police soon identify Susie as a murder case, and this classification tears this once picturesque family apart.

Susie constantly fights between her inability of letting her family go, and finding where she truly belongs in heaven. She looks to her mentor in heaven, Franny, for advice on how to deal with the loss she's experiencing. “When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things,“ Franny said. “What about the dead?“ I asked. “Where do we go?” Susie is having a difficult time understanding where she belongs, and it is a concept that she struggles with throughout the story. Can she let go of her past and still hold onto her family? Is her murderer ever found out and punished? Can her family ever rebuild themselves after being so maliciously torn apart? Only time will tell.

I read this book on a recommendation of a friend, and it has become one of my favorite books. The story looks at death and grieving from such a different perspective, and I feel that in a way it comforts the reader. The book gives one answer to the question, “What happens to the dead?”. It pulls the reader through a pool of various emotions, and takes them deep inside what the grieving process really entails. This book will make you angry, it will make you laugh, and cry; but in the end it will just make you realize how happy you are to be alive. Take nothing for granted, because things can only last for so long.

Though the story focuses on a somber subject, it is sprinkled with miracles and revelations that shed a more positive light on the situation. The story was modeled after the rape Alice Sebold experienced in college, and if you like this book you may also like to read Lucky: A Memoir, by Alice Sebold. Other books of interest may include, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbasky, and My Sister’s Keeper by Josi Picoult. Alice Sebold created a unique and beautiful story about how difficult it is for a family to deal with the loss of a loved one to such a horrific crime. We see the revelations of Susie's family as well as how she comes to terms with her own death. This is a creative, special, and intriguing story that may have you reaching for a box of Kleenex; however, it is a story that you won't want to put down.

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.” -The Lovely Bones

At age fourteen, Susie Salmon is brutally raped, murdered, and dismembered by a neighbor. Although this may sound like the beginning of a horror story or a thriller, The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, turns a horrendous crime into a story about the emotional journey both Susie, her family, and friends experience. Susie narrates her story from heaven, which she now resides in after her death. We soon find out that this heaven is unlike the heaven we often imagine, this heaven is anything that you want it to be. Susie's heaven appears to be her school play ground and anything that she desires magically appears before her eyes. However, her heaven can never be the one thing Susie would love to have; the life she used to live.

Susie looks down upon her family from heaven, and watches them pick up the pieces of this horrific murder. We watch the separation of her parents, the daring journey her father makes to find the killer, her younger sister build massive walls to become stronger, and her younger brother attempt to understand what the word "gone" truly means. We also see how a young girl deals with having all that is looked forward to ripped away from her in a single moment. Susie misses out and is robbed of experiences that most may take for granted.

The Lovely Bones portrays the emotional and tolling journey a devastating experience like this takes on a family, and a community. The reader experiences the grieving process alongside the family, and watches as the family tries to rebuild itself after a horrible loss. The book is relevant for most people, because it focuses on material that almost everyone experiences...death. All the while children at school are speculating what exactly happened to her, while her murderer is feverishly trying to cover his tracks. Police soon identify Susie as a murder case, and this classification tears this once picturesque family apart.

Susie constantly fights between her inability of letting her family go, and finding where she truly belongs in heaven. She looks to her mentor in heaven, Franny, for advice on how to deal with the loss she's experiencing. “When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things,“ Franny said. “What about the dead?“ I asked. “Where do we go?” Susie is having a difficult time understanding where she belongs, and it is a concept that she struggles with throughout the story. Can she let go of her past and still hold onto her family? Is her murderer ever found out and punished? Can her family ever rebuild themselves after being so maliciously torn apart? Only time will tell.

I read this book on a recommendation of a friend, and it has become one of my favorite books. The story looks at death and grieving from such a different perspective, and I feel that in a way it comforts the reader. The book gives one answer to the question, “What happens to the dead?”. It pulls the reader through a pool of various emotions, and takes them deep inside what the grieving process really entails. This book will make you angry, it will make you laugh, and cry; but in the end it will just make you realize how happy you are to be alive. Take nothing for granted, because things can only last for so long.

Though the story focuses on a somber subject, it is sprinkled with miracles and revelations that shed a more positive light on the situation. The story was modeled after the rape Alice Sebold experienced in college, and if you like this book you may also like to read Lucky: A Memoir, by Alice Sebold. Other books of interest may include, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbasky, and My Sister’s Keeper by Josi Picoult. Alice Sebold created a unique and beautiful story about how difficult it is for a family to deal with the loss of a loved one to such a horrific crime. We see the revelations of Susie's family as well as how she comes to terms with her own death. This is a creative, special, and intriguing story that may have you reaching for a box of Kleenex; however, it is a story that you won't want to put down.

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.” -The Lovely Bones