The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

[Un]lucky #13! I'm starting to think that my goal of 50 is way too high...I'll just read as much as I can and be satisfied with that. Now if only I could apply that mindset to other areas of my life, we'd be great.

So yeah. The Lovely Bones. I'm sure some of you have read this already since it's a pretty popular book and the movie just came out last year and all, but I'd never read it before and after nabbing a copy at Goodwill I thought I'd give it a go.

For those of you who haven't read it, here's the official description:

When we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. This was before milk carton photos and public service announcements, she tells us; back in 1973, when Susie mysteriously disappeared, people still believed these things didn't happen. In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and her own adjustment to the strange new place she finds herself. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. With love, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie watches her family as they cope with their grief, her father embarks on a search for the killer, her sister undertakes a feat of amazing daring, her little brother builds a fort in her honor and begin the difficult process of healing. In the hands of a brilliant novelist, this story of seemingly unbearable tragedy is transformed into a suspenseful and touching story about family, memory, love, heaven, and living.

An interesting concept, to be sure! But given everything I'd heard about this book, I was expecting something much more grisly and depressing than what I found it to be. Seriously, I've had friends tell me that it was painful to read in some parts because it was so gruesome and that they bawled their eyes out at the end. And at the beginning. And the middle, too.

Well, buck up, people. This book was NOT as heart-wrenching as it's been made out to be. Don't get me wrong, it's a good novel! It's just not some fantastic tragedy that spurned me to get all weepy and reflective. In fact, I found the description of Susie's murder to be rather tame, as far as murder descriptions go.

But anyways, overall this was a good book. Sebold combines grief with humor and offers a view into each character's mind, keeping the text from ever getting boring or too heavy. She has a way of describing things that makes them seem so familiar that it's extremely easy to picture what is going on, like in this passage...

"It's after dark, Susie," he said.

I wish now that I had known this was weird. I had never told him my name. I guess I thought my father had told him one of the embarrassing anecdotes he saw merely as loving testaments to his children. My father was the kind of dad who kept a nude photo of you when you were three in the downstairs bathroom, the one that guests would use. He did this to my little sister, Lindsey, thank God. At least I was spared that indignity. But he liked to tell a story about how, once Lindsey was born, I was so jealous that one day while he was on the phone in the other room, I moved down the couch --he could see me from where he stood --and tried to pee on top of Lindsey in her carrier. This story humiliated me every time he told it, to the pastor of our church, to our neighbor Mrs. Stead, who was a therapist and whose take on it he wanted to hear, and to everyone who ever said "Susie has a lot of spunk!"

"Spunk!" my father would say. "Let me tell you about spunk," and he would launch immediately into his Susie-peed-on-Lindsey story.

Totally imagineable, right?

Sebold also follows the characters years into the future, describing how times change and memories fade, but the effects of a tragedy still linger and twist the lives of those involved, be it directly or not. I especially enjoyed getting to see Susie's classmates and younger siblings grow up and the effect that the murder has on how they choose to live their lives.

Be warned though: this book does not have a happy ending. It doesn't have a sad ending, necessarily, just more of a conclusion that ties up everything. Not that that's BAD! If anything, that's a good thing; the best novels are the ones where not everything works out exactly like it should. It what makes them memorable.

And to be fair, I've never experienced a loss of someone close to me. Not really close anyways, and certainly not ever to murder! If I had, this book would have been much more powerful and moving and cry-worthy, I'm sure. Maybe I'll reread it if that ever happens (but let's hope it doesn't, kay?).

Final verdict? I'd recomend this book to anyone, really, just on the basis of it being a good read. It wasn't my favorite book ever, but I definitely didn't NOT like it.

Your thoughts?

Night all!