Alice Sebold’s novel was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2003, the year that Valerie Martin’s Property won the prize.
A friend of mine was so excited about The Lovely Bones, that she bought it as soon as it was available in paperback, and I’ve had my copy ever since.
Because as much as she’d wanted to read it, almost as soon as she started, she wanted it out of her sight immediately and lastingly.
The Lovely Bones has that potential to divide readers, boldly and unequivocally.
It’s not the style, not the voice, not the language, not the setting; it’s the novel’s very premise that will either draw you in or push you away.
Here’s how that happens.
“‘How to Commit the Perfect Murder’ was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.”
That’s Susie Salmon, the narrator of Sebold’s debut. She is 14 years old. Forever. Because she was murdered on January 6, 1973.
Readers only know her, in fact, after she has died. In the first few pages of our acquaintance, she recounts the horrifying events that led to her death. It is the stuff of nightmares.
And, yes, in the second chapter, we see Susie’s heaven. We meet her friends there, her case worker; we see the games that she likes to play there.
Because there isn’t a lot for Susie to do up there. So of course she spends a lot of time thinking about murder and death and loss.
But mostly what readers see, through Susie’s eyes, is what she has left behind. She is always thinking and always watching her friends and family, those who continue to live on Earth.
So it’s not an uplifting tale. It’s narrated by a dead girl, and it revolves around what she has lost and how others are dealing with her loss, their loss.
Many readers will be put off by that immediately. Many others will be put off by the extended meditation on grief.
Each of the characters responds differently. And those responses change, too, as time passes, while Susie is still watching.
Here’s one survivor: “He had been keeping, daily, weekly, yearly, an underground storage room of hate.” (269)
And another: “…she had often felt since — that I was with her somehow, in her thoughts and limbs — moving with her like a twin.” (237)
And yet another: “Like someone who has survived a gut-shot, the wound had been closing, closing — braiding into a scar for eight long years.” (242)
I don’t want to identify these individuals because it some ways it’s unexpected, the ways in which members of Susie’s community respond.
But it is true that the expanse of the cast in itself may also divide readers.
The Lovely Bones considers all the main players in this drama, but also boyfriends, neighbours and extended family,a detective, a nurse…and a murderer.
Whether you are drawn in, or pushed back, The Lovely Bones is an uncomfortable — but also, if you can persist with the premise, compelling — story.
In the end (whatever ‘end’ means), it seems that the heart of the novel resides in this belief which one of the characters holds as fundamentally true:
“…the dead truly talk to us, that in the air between the living, spirits bob and weave and laugh with us. They are the oxygen we breathe.”
I enjoyed some of the story’s symbolism (the motif of the house, the idea of structure, what is enclosed and what expands beyond borders), the concept of other-worldliness, and I really did want to see how things turned out for these characters.
Like the reviewer for the Sunday Telegraph wrote (Maggie O’Farrell: “…hours later, I was still there, book in hand, transfixed”), I did find it every engaging and the pages nearly turned themselves.
For my reading taste, however, I would have appreciated a more complex structure, or a stronger sense of place.
A narrative like Suzette Mayr’s Monoceros — which considers some similar themes — has an additional layer of sophistication in the storytelling, and that, with the wide range of various characters’ responses to their grief in that novel, substantially deepened my reading experience of that story of loss.
Companion Reads:
Alexi Zentner’s Touch (2011), a beautiful and haunting tale of discovery and loss and magic
Myla Goldberg’s Bee Season (2000), for a different take on a family’s unraveling
Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach (1999), another exploration of loss, on the land of the Haisla
Note: Here’s a link to the LibraryThing Group for Orange January/July, the Facebook group, and to my way-too-obsessive debate with myself about what to read this month!
I also like a bit more structure to books about grief otherwise it seems the theme overwhelms everything. I’ve watched the movie and now reading your review (my first of the book), I see that that the movie chose to highlight other areas of the book. It is of course hard to film interior anguish.
Maybe if I had discussed the plot more, it might not have sounded so different; there isn’t much that I can say about the events of the story without stealing from the reader’s discovery of things as the years pass and that’s the novel’s strength as it stands, so I didn’t want to take away from that!
I liked aspects of the books, but I didn’t like the ending. Glad to see you’ll be reading Touch soon, hope you enjoy it.
I can see where the ending could be problematic, depending what you liked about the book to begin with. I’ve already read Touch; I just forgot to link to my thoughts on it. I think it’s interesting to consider how these two different writers took on the idea of “what’s next”, “where people go after they die”, in such different ways. And, for me, the setting of Zentner’s novel adds another layer to the theme of grief that makes it stand-out storytelling.
I know a lot of people didn’t like this book, but I thought it was well done. It was definitely a story to pull you in and not let you go until you got to the end. I even liked the movie more than I expected to. Loved the Bee Season as well. Will have to check out your other recommendations.
It helps if you know that others have been disappointed by a film, as sometimes that alone can boost your own experience of it, because you were expecting less to start with, hm? I haven’t seen the film of this one yet, nor the film of Bee Season, but I’d like to at least try them.
I read this one a long time ago, around the time it was first released and back when I wasn’t reading much outside of my schoolwork. I have no idea how I’d feel about it now (though I did pick up a cheap copy at the used bookstore a while back so that I could re-read it and see!), but I remember this completely sucking me in and not letting go until I was done with it and it’s the rare book that achieves that. It might not hold up, but at the time I was really impressed with it (but have never wanted to read any of Sebold’s other books!).
That’s kind of the situation that I was in when I read Tartt’s A Secret History, which I experienced in the same way; I haven’t re-read it yet either, but I’ve considered it…
It’s been a long time since I read this book so I don’t remember much about the structure, etc. I do remember liking the glimpses of grief and how it wasn’t a happy story because how could something like that be happy? Wasn’t impressed with the movie though.
You’re right, Anna: how could it be happy. Oh, I’d forgotten about the film. I always find it interesting to see how a book “takes” to screen, even though it can be a frustrating/disappointing experience too…