Pros: Well written, interesting subject, believable characters
Cons: The middle drags too much, the end is rushed. Good effort but uneven.
The Bottom Line: The unevenness is frustrating. Readers might understandably quit in the middle. But the writer tries out a new idea, overall, and it's an interesting, if not entirely successful, effort.
seattlegirluw's Full Review: Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones
Okay I got some very good criticism/feedback so I've updated this review a bit to be more readable.
First of all, as a bestseller, this novel has a surprisingly macabre theme. In the first few pages, the narrator, a young teen, is raped and murdered by a neighbor. For the rest of the book, she reviews the grieving process of her family and those who knew her. It's certainly an interesting prospect because most works with a similar subject matter leave off no later than the first year anniversary. This follows the family for just under a decade.
Let's start with what there is to like about this book. First off, as I said, interesting approach. And the author's concept of heaven is very charming. Each of us have our own personal versions of heaven -- but this doesn't leave us in exile. Anyone with a similar view ends up wandering around in a commonly-shared area. So you're never alone. And I like that throughout the book, the girl's advisor in heaven is trying to get her to let her earthly ties go. I really think the dead have better things to do than fret about our mundane affairs. At least I hope so.
The book is also well written, if deceptively simply worded. The complexities shine through, while being convincingly narrated by a young mind.
Now, for the less positive. My main concern is the tempo. The first year after the murder takes up just about a third of the book. Which makes sense, since most people not related to a dead one probably heal and, in some ways, forget about a heinous affair such as murder. We watch the police stymied due to lack of clues, the father convinced he knows who did it (he's right, but the murderer is cunning and has covered his tracks well), the mother becoming remote, the five-year-old brother struggling to understand what "gone" means.
After the first year anniversary is celebrated, the book gets bogged down. While interesting to read -- as I said, the premise of following a family's grief for the long haul is rarely seen nowadays -- it also becomes exactly what it is: a list of mundane existences. There's a reason that many authors don't go past the one-year anniversary. That's because life inexorably moves on, whether the grievers acknowledge it or not. Other children still have to be fed. Sisters still have to go to school and, eventually, their classmates don't whisper about the death as much. So the fact is that life gets boring again pretty quickly. And so does this book.
What I would have liked to see was an examination of the two remaining children growing up in the shadow of a dead sister, which I don't think the author quite accomplished. The brother especially would have had most of his memories as the brother of a dead girl. His parents never quite are the same, and that would have been interesting to see.
Instead, the author drags the book along in skips and starts to describe a year or two. We see the brother a little bit older, we see the father start to emerge from the most extreme grief to a more subtle version that fills him. We see the mother escape everything in the most extreme, and perhaps cowardly, way possible.
Then suddenly, as though she realized the book was getting too long or too boring, the author skips ahead by about five years. The sister is graduating college. The brother is just about to become a teen himself. And while the ending isn't exactly neat it seems a little easy to me. (Alas, I'd like to go into detail but that would ruin some plot points.) It jumps too far ahead and its previous dawdling didn't accomplish much. So the reader feels torn between relief that the middle of the book's dragging is over, and the sense that something important was breezed by.
I suppose the problem is that the author can't decide whether to chronicle the saga of grief or whether she wants a neat, clean ending. She tries for both and it just doesn't work.
That said, I am conflicted about my recommendation. It is dull in the middle, yes. But, though it doesn't work, it's a piece that is an interesting failure. It is, perhaps, worth sticking around through the unevenness, if it means experiencing the author's admirable effort -- even though it can't quite fulfill the lofty goals it set for itself.
Sebold s mesmerizing and luminous first novel--a #1 national bestseller--builds a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, and even joy, following an u...More at Buy.com
Once in a generation a novel comes along that taps a vein of universal human experience, resonating with readers of all ages. THE LOVELY BONES is such...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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