The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

fiction, (c) 2003, 326pp
rating: *****

People have been telling me to read this book for years, and I sort of put it off because it seemed to angsty. Recently though, I've been trying to read the books that "everyone" has read and talks about so that I might be able to converse about them intelligently. (In the last couple of years, I've read The Corrections, The Time Traveler's Wife and The DaVinci Code for this same reason). The Lovely Bones is the most recent in this string of novels.

For people living under a rock, The Lovely Bones is Alice Sebold's first novel. It is about a young girls named Susie Salmon who is brutally raped and murdered. She goes to heaven and watches over her family and friends as they attempt to cope with her death and move on with their lives. Through her eyes, we see how her death changes her friends, family and even total strangers. In heaven, Susie herself also gets a chance to grow and change as she learns to cope with her own death.

The Lovely Bones could easily get maudlin and depressing. It could easily have become the literary equivalent to a Lifetime Television Movie about "dealing with death". However, Sebold is very careful to avoid those kind of cliches and instead presents a fresh and interesting look at this subject. While this book is cerainly not an "upper", there is a definite element of hope and the reader feels less badly for Susie and more so for her family members who are forced to go out without her. In a way, Sebold makes death - even violent death - feel almost mundane for those that are dying and presents it as part of the normal cycle of life. There are lots of great characters in this book, from Susie's alcoholic grandmother to her childhood acquaintance Ruth who grows up believes that she can see ghosts and spirits. The writing is evocative and detailed without being tedious. This book was never dull and I finished it under two days. I highly recommend it - turns out all those who recommended it to me were entirely correct.