Rating: 
Summary: One of the best novels of the 21st century so far
Review: Note: spoilers I have read through this novel more than once, and I can say it grows stronger each time. Millions of copies, a year and a half on the bestseller lists, and almost two thousand Amazon reviews later, The Lovely Bones keeps on going. What is it about this novel that has touched so many of us at this particular point in time? The aftermath of 9/11 has been put forth as one explanation, but while that might get a lot of people to open the book, it didn't get them to finish it. Susie Salmon is but the latest incarnation of a familiar figure in American literature - the youth who never gets sullied by having to grow up, somewhat like Holden Caulfield or Sylvia Plath. The unique twist here is that she gets to watch everyone else grow up and comment on that ... growing up in her own way, as she admits at the end of the book, reaching a final peace with herself on Earth as an absence others must bridge, becoming wise in a way that cannot be measured in years. As the New York Times admitted in its review, most readers would probably pass, sight unseen, on a first novel in which a 14-year-old murder victim watches her family from heaven. But Sebold almost makes it work for the whole 300+ pages. The only part that doesn't is the "Lazarus" scene with Ruth near the end. On its own terms, it works fine, but as even Sebold seems to realize it sort of violates the rules of contact between heaven and earth she's established throughout the novel ... everything else seems plausible, assuming of course that you believe in life after death, but then if the dead can not only briefly return to the world but inhabit the bodies of living in order to fulfill unrealized sexual agendas among other things (and let me say that Susie's decision to do that instead of finger Mr. Harvey and pass on where her body is buried actually does seem understandable), why doesn't this happen more often in the real world? Huh? That said, there's much to admire. It was deft to make this not the story of Susie's life told in flashback from beyond the grave a la Sunset Boulevard, or an accidental removal from life a la Here Comes Mr.Jordan/Heaven Can Wait/that Chris Rock version, but to make Susie's death and ascent to heaven the beginning of the story. I don't find Susie's heaven as insipid as some of the other reviewers seem to; isn't it supposed to be the point that a) it appeals primarily to Susie and b) it's, as in Heaven Can Wait, Defending your Life and other such narratives, but a prelude to the real, wider Heaven that Susie has moved on to at the end of the story? In fact, having grown up in a couple of leafy Northeastern suburbs myself I can say I know exactly where she's coming from. As the radiator woman sang in "Eraserhead," "in heaven, everything's fine ... you get yours and I get mine." The rereadings I mentioned above helped close a couple of plot holes that seem to have boggled other people here: how the police link Mr. Harvey to Susie (the fingerprints on the Coke bottle ... his they could have matched with the ones in the house; hers from her birth certificate). I don't think the police as depicted here were necessarily incompetent, just outfoxed by a serial killer with more practice committing the crimes. It also comes out as you reread just how subtly Sebold charts the changes in Susie, the way her tone moves from impatient teenager to beatific spirit over the course of the narrative, alternating those perspectives constantly as Susie recalls them from her present vantage point somewhere in the blue distance. I like how she creates a sense of omniscience by having Susie often refer in passing to the resolution of certain plot threads that otherwise haven't happened at that point in the story. This could have just been a puerile attempt to work through her rape experience and deal with her very real fear of death during that; instead she actually managed to write a novel that, in the end, works because all of us have someone we remember in our lives who never got to truly live into adulthood and/or maturity, who remains safely forever young, trapped, like the penguin in the epigraph, in a perfect world, beyond the touch of earthly years, and we'd like to know, just once, how they're doing there. Surprising that we haven't heard any word on the movie yet other than that Scotswoman supposedly working on the script. There's a lot here that could make a really great film in this particular genre ... let's hope they don't screw it up.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult story told lovingly
Review: I was very impressed by Sebolds treatment of the subject. Not melancholy nor irreverent. Just incredibly sensitive.
Rating: 
Summary: A hell of a concept of Heaven
Review: One could think Heaven is a wonderful and undisturbed place since it's our final destination and a coronation of a temporal life (well, maybe for some of us). But not the author - for her it's rather more like hell! Being an angel seems to be a cruel penalty for humans. The main character died but still missed her earthly life instantly hoping someone down there would think of her for at least a while and regreting things she didn't manage to experience. Living in such Heaven would surely be exhausting and depressing whereas as an angel you cannot do anything to interfere with any aspect of life of those who are still alive - neither to help nor to hurt them in any way.
Rating:
Summary: The Lovely Bones
Review: This novel is one of the best novels i had ever read! It start out with a very interesting and exciting introduction that kept me glue to the story. Inside the book it showed me lessons about love life and death. The plot was about a 14 years old girl being raped and killed very close to her house by a murder no one suspected. The girl was actually the narrator, which made the story became so interesting since we already know what really did happened. I love the way Sebold mentioned every characters in the novel that made the readers able to undertand their personalities and attitudes and how different members of the family react differently to her death. It was a new experience for me to read a book concerning death, but it had gave me a very good impression that made me want to read other books similiar to this. In this novel it made me nervous, excited, happy, and so sad that it made me cry.
Rating:
Summary: Morbid version of Our Town
Review: For those who think that this is a slick genre thriller or a great whodunit need to look elsewhere. Or if you were like me, stick with it find yourself pleasantly surprised. I picked this up, like most, from strong word of mouth and a moderately original premise. A girl who is brutally killed tells her story watches her friends and family from heaven.
While the premise is violent, the book is not. It's about a family, community and the victim itself impacted by seemingly senseless act of violence. Both sides coping with loss and struggling to let go. I found myself wading through the first seventy five pages or so and I realized two things. This book was not what I thought it was and I really enjoy reading about these characters.
Those who say that this is a classic might be speaking a little to soon. You don't uncork a bottle of wine that has not aged properly. But the book does resonate and I would love to see where this is in fifteen years or so.
Profound and evocative, this is one of the few "popular fiction" novels that live up to it's hype. Just be aware that it's more Thorton Wilder and Russel Banks than John Sanford and Patricia Cornwell. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Disturbing
Review: I opted to read "The Lovely Bones" simply because it has received so much attention, being on the best seller's list, being compared to classics such as "To Kill A Mocking Bird", etc. I was completely disappointed in the book itself and the fact that it has received so much praise. While the book does raise some thought provoking questions about death, the whole concept of the book is very dark and for lack of better words, weird. The only reason I continued to turn the pages until the end was because I wanted to know how it was all going to be tied together and that turned out to be the biggest disappointment of all. I honestly don't know why I even continued to read it after the first chapter was so graphic in the details of Susie's rape and brutal murder. I found her heaven to be a very lonely place, not at all like one would hope Heaven to actually be. And I found Ray's and Ruth's obsession with her death pretty unnatural. I wouldn't reccommend this book to anyone who doesn't care to read about the rape and murder of a child, a disappointing heaven, a sick and twisted killer, and a totally ridiculous ending. Very disappointing! A classic, definitely not!
Rating:
Summary: Relationships
Review: While Sebold creates a wonderful character in Susie, it is the relationships between the other characters that made the book amazing.
Rating:
Summary: Engaging Story
Review: In terms of comparison of theme, there are many similarities between THE LOVELY BONES and GHOST, especially pertaining to the frustration of the murdered spirit not being able to reveal herself/himself (respectively) to the killer. It was certainly an engaging story and the writing was in line with LUCKY, MY FRACTURED LIFE, and SECRET LIFE OF BEES. The character drive is incredible and carries the story.
Rating:
Summary: Why did "The Lovely Bones" become a mega-seller?
Review: On August 14, 2002, I attended an Alice Sebold reading. As an ex-journalist, I'm a cynic. Until that day, I had only read about five novels since 1978. Most fiction involves less research, "rules" and time than non-fiction. Yet Sebold spent five years writing "The Lovely Bones." She didn't intend it to be her Great American Novel (awful cliché), a handbook about managing grief. Then astoundingly, it sold more than one million copies in less than two months. Why? On May 8, 1981, Alice Sebold was raped, an incident that nearly destroyed her. She wrote an explicit, shocking and almost neglected book in 1999 called "Lucky." It was this knowledge, as a non-fiction reader, and not hype or current events, that drew me to "The Lovely Bones." You may not have to know this about Sebold. But if you do, what she writes in "The Lovely Bones" assumes credibility, even if you're shaking your head in bewilderment, having trouble "suspending" disbelief. "Hype" is a fashionably pessimistic word being used with excess to leverage what in my view are elitist comments against this book. "Hype" is a product of marketing with little relevance to quality. I agree with whomever said the following: People who give into "hype" expecting a seismic shift in their lives before turning to "page one," are doomed to disappointment. Hype doesn't give a book "legs." Word-of-mouth does. Narrating from the dead, as Susie Salmon does in "The Lovely Bones," isn't new. In the shorthand of cinema, you can quickly point to "Sunset Boulevard (1950) and "American Beauty (1999)." She may seem wiser beyond her "years," but it isn't critical to separate adolescent vs. adult narration. "Real time" exists for the living. Susie's dead. In "The Lovely Bones," the only thing that matters is what remains in memory. We question what we can't see, yet invisible things like oxygen, love, hate, lust, sorrow and hope are undeniable. After people die, we hear their voices, we remember their touch and the way they look. They're in the next room, watching TV, reading, whatever. Sebold captures our obsession, our "presence of mind" about the dead. This obviously resonates with people, many without the time to read 10 books per year. To denigrate fans of this book smacks of unnecessary snobbery that promotes literary "class distinctions." Conversely, sophisticated readers raise valid criticisms that wouldn't be as intense if they read the "NC-17" horrors of "Lucky." Sebold creates an atmosphere absent of shrillness or clinically described violence. A "quick read" is not synonymous with shallowness. Expressing the intangible with sentences 10-25 words in length is near impossible. But Sebold's ability to impart abstract thoughts into simple sentences can't be dismissed. This is not a murder mystery. If it was, it'd be ordinary. This is an admittedly broad-brush story about family connections that pushes the thriller into the back seat. Splitting hairs about the plausibility of character motivations misses the big picture of "The Lovely Bones." It's not literature aspiring for greatness, filled with big words, tortuous sentences and the type of false profundities that wins awards. It's a book that achieves something greater for most writers -- a chance to weave a collection of universal themes -- through an accessible narrative that sophisticated readers as well as the greater body of people who have zero desire to read can appreciate. Perhaps this is why disappointed readers keep using words like "overrated" or phrases like, "doesn't live up to the hype." They're comfortable with authors requiring more words leading toward a revelation that feels closer to irony and "truth" than uplift. Hence what's "familiar" seems trite. But Sebold isn't trite. We demand logical human behavior, but there's a randomness about everything that lies ahead. Wry observations bring the ordinary to the surface without, in most cases, pretentiousness. Accusations of peddling cheap sentiment ring false because she draws upon her past to conjure up spare, abstract subtext and expressions to carry her tale. She succeeds using observational symbolism without wielding a preachy sledgehammer. Looking for religious dogma in heaven? Forget it. To Susie, "heaven" is just a shorthand for where she "is." It could be anything. Sebold's idea is that the dead do more than just "think." There are reasons why they suddenly seem near, then disappear. She told ABC News that she doesn't think too much about heaven. But she obviously thinks a lot about the dead, especially victims of violence. Some complain her characters are "caricatures." Composites of traits we've seen in friends and ourselves makes a concept less believable? Susie's "voice," regardless of age, represents her view, however subjectively precocious, illogical or formulaic. Only one chapter goes off the tracks, proffering a scene that comes too close to "Ghost." Is this a book for the ages? Maybe not. But I'm disturbed that a "commercial" success, even unexpected (as some forget this was), can be disproportionately punished with contempt in forums, unworthy of being labeled a "literary success." If the masses like it, hype is responsible and it must be suspect, despite glowing reviews from respected critics, many with advanced degrees in English and comparative literature. For me, a non-fiction reader, the restrained poignancy of Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" is a surprise in the aftermath of her uncensored and harrowing memoir, "Lucky." In the hands of any writer bereft of real-life misfortune, concepts about death in a fictional tale, wouldn't have worked. It's impossible for me to ignore the author's history, despite her repeated statements that a huge ideological gulf exists between "Lucky" and "The Lovely Bones." Yet the success of "The Lovely Bones" proves it doesn't matter. Thirty years from now, people will still be talking about it. I'm convinced no matter how hard Sebold tries -- the legacy created by her non-fiction "Lucky" and her fictional "The Lovely Bones" -- will remain preserved AND inextricably linked. This is why she succeeds in restating, perhaps inadvertently, the universal message that if life is defined by only what we see, our dead remain in the past. But if life is defined by our intermittent recognition of their "presence," they remain eternal.
Rating:
Summary: Just one question...
Review: An excellent read...but it should make us all wonder...just who are the people in our neighbourhoods?
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