FLSappy's Full Review: Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones
The Lovely Bones is the tale of a family, the Salmons, torn asunder after the brutal murder of their eldest daughter, Suzie, in 1973. In a peculiar, yet intriguing twist, it is Suzie herself who narrates the story from that which she has termed the "Inbetween": The first stage of heaven from which she now watches as the aftermath of her death unfolds. The Inbetween is a subjective experience for each soul and can be anything to the dead that the dead desire -- save for life itself.
Back on Earth, the sudden and violent nature of the Salmons' loss, as well as the fact that Suzie's murderer has not been apprehended, shakes the family -- and the small, close-knit Pennsylvanian community -- to its core. Suzie's father Jack, a loving and kind-hearted man, is so utterly deflated by his pain that all he can do is obsess over the suspected identity of Suzie's killer, eventually doing so at the expense of his wife and surviving children; wife Abigail, Suzie's mom, is borne into her own hell after her daughter's death, one in which she believes that she is being punished for never having wanted children to begin with; sister Lyndsey, younger than Suzie by only a year, grows stoic and strong while trying to pick up the remnants of a life that now includes a dead sister and two distant and preoccupied parents; and four-year-old Buckley struggles to understand just why his once-happy family is falling apart. Also touched by this grizzly event are Ray Singh, the boy who gave Suzie her first and only kiss, and Ruth Conners, the brilliant outcast with a special ability to feel the dead.
For much of the book, we follow these characters, and a few more, as their lives weave in and out of each other's, struggling not only with their grief, but with the way in which that grief is effectively changing the landscape of their world forever. It is poignant, disturbing, at times dreadfully sad and at others, full of whimsy. There is no denying that this book is sentimental bordering on maudlin, but, for the most part, that's OK.
Unfortunately, by the last quarter of The Lovely Bones, Ms. Sebold seems to have decided that she's thrown too many balls into the air: Many of the plot threads come to an abrupt dead-end, which leaves one asking why they had been introduced at all. In addition, the tone of the novel changes and becomes an exercise in the fantastic, appearing too much like amateurish self-indulgence on the part of the author. One scene, in particular, is so out of left field and over-the-top for this particular story, that it takes the reader out of the moment -- and it's very, very hard to get back in.
In the end, Sebold takes too many easy ways out with her characters, giving them -- and the reader -- so much less than they deserve. We are left with no real answers, no satisfactory climax, no sense of loose ends being tied. This is a story with so much potential, one that could've been done justice by the right storyteller. Too bad that Sebold wasn't that.
An interesting, yet highly flawed novel that is worth a borrow from the library more than a purchase.
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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