The Lovely Bones
I wasn’t really looking for something to read when I walked through the book aisle at Target Thursday. But it’s difficult to pass them and not look, so there I was, drinking in each title as if I were parched and they precious liquid.
A woman made the space too small when she joined me in the aisle, dragging her cart in backwards, like she thought it would take up less room that way. Barely glancing at me, she asked ‘are you looking for something to read?’ and I replied ‘always’. Beating a path directly to the back wall, she picked up Alice Sebold’s ‘The Lovely Bones’ and held it out for me to take while stating emphatically ‘this is a good book’. How can you argue with that? It’s like she was sent to tell me to read this book. So I did.
As it turns out, The Lovely Bones is a very good book. I love a good storyteller and Sebold is certainly that. Both easy to read and understand… yet she weaves an intricate tale so visually stunning she even makes you feel sorry for a serial killer.
That’s her gift, the balance. The understanding she bestows is a gift and a curse, much like 14 year old Susie’s heaven. Everyone gets their own heaven when they die, you see… and when Susie is raped and killed in a cornfield she goes to her own heaven where she can watch the living if she wants. But even there things are never ‘perfect’. One miraculous afternoon she actually ‘falls back to earth’ but does not, cannot stay.
Now that I’ve finished I can see obscure references, allegories and touchstones everywhere. The snowglobe, the icicle, the suburbs.
Susie’s body is never found, though the reader knows the location. It doesn’t matter, because ‘lovely bones’ are not her remains. Lovely bones [I think] references the framework of man, on a smaller scale the framework of family.
I could write a book about the book, but then you’d not need to read the real thing.
7 Responses
I had no idea she’d been raped! Oh, my. Well, that could be why -and how- she creates such an authentic landscape.
The book is excellent. And she doesn’t get graphic, though it feels ‘real’. I don’t usually read anything with death or rape but I’m glad I read this book.
I read this book a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed. I have read somewhere that they are making a film of it.
LizzyTs last blog post..FIRST ATTEMPT
I’m glad to hear that; I think it would make an interesting movie! 
She wasn’t the only one to be raped in that tunnel, when Alice Sebold was giving her statement to the police, they told her she was lucky to be alive as a woman was raped and murdered weeks earlier in the same location. The reason she wrote this book, according to an NPR highlight, was after years of alcoholism and failed relationships after the rape, she sat down one night to give that other woman who was murdered a voice. She wrote the 1st chapter in one sitting pretty much as is. Its a pretty amazing story.
Brian Todds last blog post..Night Flight over the Puget Sound
Here is a link to the NPR show Writer’s Almanac which featured her on her birthday, Sept 6th, 2007.
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2007/09/06
You can just read the text or listen to the broadcast.
Brian Todds last blog post..Night Flight over the Puget Sound
Thanks so much for the link, Brian! I love this:
Alice Sebold said, “It’s very weird to succeed at 39 years old and realize that in the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted.”
I’ve heard it’s quite good but can’t bring myself to read it. Alice Sebold was actually raped herself in Syracuse. I remember this because I hung out in the park where it happened (many years later) and only found about it after I left. She helped catch the guy, which is great. Not great great but probably gave her a little more closure.