The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Hey, guys! I'm back with another review.

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Basics

Title: The Lovely Bones
Author: Alice Sebold
Release Date: 2002
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 9780316044400
Number of pages: 400
Genre: novel

Summary

The main protagonist is called Susie Salmon. She's 14 years old. In December 1973 she is raped and killed by her neighbor Mr Harvey. She ends up in „her own heaven“ where she keeps an eye on her family, on her friends, on her murderer – well, actually she can look down on everybody.
Her father goes soon single-handed after her murderer because the police has no clue.
But Susie can only find her inward peace when her family has it, too.

My opinion

Now it's time to pick it to pieces.
I thought a bit about how I would review this book and I decided to divide it into three sections:

- The first 40 pages:
I liked the book in the beginning. I even had goosebumps while Susie talked about her death.
The topic appeared really interessant to me. A girl which observes her family, friends and her murderer from above? Risky topic! I didn't really bother with thinking about the plot.
My only thought was that maybe there would be this huge showdown during which Susie gets back to earth and helps her family to capture her murderer.

- The next 300 pages:
Where's the plot? Where's the excitement? At least a little twist? No?
Honestly: It was boring. Susie watches her family chapter after chapter, narrates about events from the past and never really operates as a character.
I found 6 points I didn't like:

1) the impossible conclusions

Susie's father talks to her murderer – he's their neighbor after all – and he knows right away – he is the guilty one. There was no evidence. Mr Harvey acted really innocent during the conversation and suddenly Mr Sloan, Susie's dad, says: You are her murderer. Only 200 pages later (I paid attention) it was clarified why her father came to this conclusion. Before that, I always thought the author forgot to mention it.

2) Susie and Mr HarveyAs I've already said: Susie keeps an eye on her murderer, too. Wouldn't it be 'natural' that she feels some kind of anger or hate against him? No, not in this book. She really thinks about him in an almost impartial way. She actually never really has an opinion. Exception: her crush Ray and her sister Lindsey. She even accepts some events surrounding her mother without rage or disappointment. All I could do was shake my head.

3) Couldn't connect with anyoneIn this book I couldn't connect with any of the characters. That would have been okay, but I couldn't relate to the decisions of most of the characters either.
The mother? Nope. Ruthe? Nah. Susie. Not even a little bit.4) insufficent explanationsIn my opinion Mrs Sebold forgot to mention basic information at times.
How does Susie watch the humans from her heaven? I know that she's in a pavilion. And?
Moreover, sometimes Susie thinks something like 'blablabla, thought Dad.' How does she know that?5) change of settingIt frequently happened that the setting changed without a space between the paragraphs.
Of course that could have been a mistake by the German publisher but still, it hinders the reading flow.6) terrible comparisonsI think I've never read a book with as strange comparisons as in the lovely bones.
I picked out some quotes but they are no good because they are from the German version.

I'll try to translate them:
This scene takes place while Susie watches her sister having sex.
„In the walls of my genital were terror and blood, in the walls of hers were windows.“
Blood and terror are kind of logical but windows? Because you can open them and Lindsey opened her 'windows' (=legs). God, I have no idea.

Watch out, the next one is a spoiler! But this is, like, the most confusing one, so I'll write it down anyway.
„(...) my mother turned to my father and asked: „Have you ever loved someone in the sea?“ And he said: „No.“
„Me neither“, said my mother, „let's pretend as if it's the sea and I'm going away and we'll never see each other again.“ (...)“

What? I really thought about this one a lot, but I still came to no conclusion. Have you an idea?

Another nice quote:
„Her glanges met each other, and in the hot wire which formed between them, I saw it, I swear, like a undigested rat which wich bloated the interior of a snake"
Good one, Mrs Sebold

- And the ending: No. No. No. No. I don't accept that.
I'm honeslty shocked. I don't know how you see it but for me the event near the ending equals rape.
It does not only equals rape: It is rape.
Susie takes control over Ruth's body (she's an old friend) and has sex with a boy she (SUSIE) is in love with! After that, Ruth gets her body back
I can't believe it!
Mr Harvey is after Lindsey, Susie's sister, and she sleeps with her old crush!
He, of course, knew it's her right from the beginning and he didn't even feel guilt for her using Ruth's body.

I would have never guessed that Susie, who seemed like a really nice girl, could do something like that. She didn't spare a thought on how Ruth could feel afterwards. It's especially inexplicable when you remember that Susie was raped herself!

All in all, it wasn't worth my time. It had a terrible ending and shallow characters. I've heard so much good about The Lovely Bones, but I haven't really found anything.

Rating

1 out of 5 stars

That's it, guys!
See you next week.

Franzi