The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold’s novel depicts an unusual heaven, a hell on earth, and memorable characters in her story about connections – “sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent” – among people affected by Susie Salmon and her death (320). While Sebold does end her work fairly happily with interesting views on healing and heaven, the cruelty of the beginning and the stark suffering throughout can make this a very tough read.

Sebold plots her story well; many people devour the novel quickly to find out if the criminal is caught, if Abigail comes back, and if the family comes together. She also does a good job of weaving the parts of the story together. Places from the setting, in particular the sinkhole and the cornfield, are revisited in a way that builds suspense. For me, however, the pain of the family and their reactions seems too real. I have never been through a situation like that of the Salmons, but reading of their anguish was very difficult.

On the other hand, her depictions of heaven did not seem as probable as her descriptions of the brutal rape or the family’s reactions. While there were happy moments that seemed like heaven, when Holiday came and when Susie saw her grandfather for a short time, most of the time Susie seems to continue feeling pain. I wanted someone to kindly and gently show her how to heal. She had to endure watching the pain she had caused her family; it just seems extra cruelty on top of dying when she relates: “Almost everyone in heaven has someone they watch .... and when I wasn’t watching I could hear the others talking to those they loved on Earth just as fruitlessly as me .... one-sided cajoling and coaching of the young, a one-way loving and desiring of their mates, a single-sided card that could never be signed” (246). I really wanted her to be released from hurting; she had endured so much already.

When Susie leaves heaven to inhabit Ruth’s body and be with Ray, I lose faith with the story. I know she has watched both and this finally helps her to move on, but I did not think Sebold wrote this is a way to suspend any sense of disbelief. Throughout the novel, Sebold’s characterization believably brings the characters to life. Her details, like the dollhouses that George Harvey spends time on, make this creepy character more real. The grandmother is a bit over the top, but she does provide a sense of fun the family desperately needs. Lindsey, who defiantly refuses to accept the roles the principal and fellow students want her to take, seems true-to-life as she cries in the shower and wants to change her looks that remind everyone of Susie. After a novel that makes character and even heaven seem almost real, the situation of Susie and Ruth exchanging places seems completely wrong.


I read this book when it first came out, and I did not like it at all. Many of my good friends disagreed with me, and I could not really express why I felt such a strong dislike other than I thought the beginning was excruciatingly painful to read. My book club read it, but I did not re-read it. Most of them liked the novel. They thought my dislike might come from the fact that my daughter was about the same age as Susie when I read the book. This time through, I gave the author more credit for the aspects she did well, but I still have trouble with her book. As an English teacher often accused of only teaching depressing books, I am surprised that I have such a visceral reaction to the pain in the novel, but my dislike of it has not gone away. As I prepare to post this entry, I realize that I have always disliked the title itself and the underlying metaphor it adds to the novel. I have to admit, I am not part of the Sebold fan club.

One interesting comment that Susie makes near the end really does resonate with me, however. She said, “You don’t notice the dead leaving when they really choose to leave you. You’re not meant to.... I would compare it to a woman in the back of a lecture hall or theater whom no one notices until she slips out” (323). The excruciating pain people feel when a loved one dies eventually lessens. While the loss is always real, the sharp anguish felt at the beginning finally diminishes somewhat even as the importance and love for the person does not. Time does eventually help a heart to heal or at least to not be so painfully broken. I enjoy the image at the end of Susie making Buckley’s crazy garden bloom for her mother. I like the idea the Dr. Singh will be an empathetic doctor, one who will certainly ease a dying patient’s heart and mind. The justice of the icicle, foreshadowed earlier in the novel, finally ending George Harvey’s evil is an ironically good touch (although perhaps not too probable). But in the end, we are left with an innocent victim wishing all of us a long and happy life; it still does not seem fair.