{Synopsis} – The Lovely Bones is the story of a family devastated by a gruesome murder — a murder recounted by the teenage victim. Upsetting, you say? Remarkably, first-time novelist Alice Sebold takes this difficult material and delivers a compelling and accomplished exploration of a fractured family's need for peace and closure.
The details of the crime are laid out in the first few pages: from her vantage point in heaven, Susie Salmon describes how she was confronted by the murderer one December afternoon on her way home from school. Lured into an underground hiding place, she was raped and killed. But what the reader knows, her family does not. Anxiously, we keep vigil with Susie, aching for her grieving family, desperate for the killer to be found and punished.
Sebold creates a heaven that's calm and comforting, a place whose residents can have whatever they enjoyed when they were alive — and then some. But Susie isn't ready to release her hold on life just yet, and she intensely watches her family and friends as they struggle to cope with a reality in which she is no longer a part. To her great credit, Sebold has shaped one of the most loving and sympathetic fathers in contemporary literature.
{My thoughts} – I must confess I watched the movie before I had read the book. The movie left me in a daze slightly confused as to what was actually being portrayed. I read the book in order to try and straighten out that confusion I had been left with. The book helped to create the imagery that I was not getting from the movie. It also gave me whole story aside from the bits and pieces that were put together in the movie. All and all I would have rather read the book and skipped the movie. It’s a really nice read and it paints and interesting picture of what Heaven may possibly look like. It also shows that with a little determination and investigation it is possible to solve a murder.
Final Conclusion: 1 Star Rating.
