By now you’ve all heard about this book. Soon to be a major motion picture from the hands of Peter Jackson (oh, he of Dead Alive fame. What’s that? Lord of the Rings? Sound vaguely familiar…). I must admit, it is the release of this movie that prompted me to read this book. Netflix threw it up every few minutes in the middle of The Office. And with a line like “My name is Susie Salmon. I was fourteen years old when I was murdered.” I was hooked.
So, for those of you living under a rock the past month, The Lovely Bones is a story about, you guessed it, a fourteen year old girl who was murdered. But here’s the odd, possibly off-putting part. The story is told as a first person narrative. By Susie. From Heaven.
Oi, gag me with a spoon, right?
Well…no, actually. I’m very glad I didn’t know the premise of the book before reading it, because I probably would have let this one slip through my ink-stained fingers. What a sadness that would have been.
Let me elaborate on the plot setup a bit. Susie is fourteen. She’s been kissed, once, by the incredibly endearing Ray Singh. She has a younger sister, a much younger brother, and two loving parents. She lives in a mid-sized town in the mid-west. She’s your standard, sweet fourteen year old. Everyone knows someone like Susie. A lot of us are someone like Susie. Which makes it all the more horrible when, intrigued by a neighbor man’s ingenuity, she’s brutally murdered and broken into pieces.
Ah, a case where curiosity most certainly killed the brat.
Ooh…a little bit tasteless, no?
So Susie gets yanked out of her body, brushing the cheek of a school acquaintance on her way, and changing the lives of everyone around her forever. The book chronicles not only how Susie deals with the changes of being dead, but how people back on earth deal with her death, and the manner of it.
Sebold managed to make Susie pretty much omniscient, without the method feeling forced. We catch thoughts and feelings of various characters in the scenes, snatches of memories or urges that illuminate the situation, or deepen characterization. For this alone, the book is worth reading. A wholly unconventional take on the little dead girl novel.
If you’re all about characters, though, she’s got you covered. Every single person that gets any amount of text time is layered and fully realized. I mentioned my favorite character in the book earlier- Ray Singh. He’s in love with Susie at school, writes her a love note that he slips into her book the day she gets murdered, and is ultimately accused of her death. The official accusations go away, but the mistrust of him lingers through the next years of his life. And his love for Susie never really goes away.
Ray is smart, driven, compassionate and lonely. And we know all these things not because Sebold tells us, but because she shows us, brilliantly.
The only place this novel gets docked by me is in relation to plot. The writing is beautiful and fluid while maintaining crystal clarity. The characters are all fantastic. The setting is rich and so easy to visualize. But ultimately, what we see is the progression of lives. There are moments of excitement, moments of extreme tenderness and wrenching sadness. And that’s all well and good (very good in this case) but if you are looking for a wild ride, this is not your book. It’s slow. It’s meticulous. It’s bordering on meditative.
And the ending, my friends, is the epitome of an anti-climax.
Once in a while, I enjoy a book like that. This. Whatever. But it won’t be my go-to genre anytime soon.
That being said, I highly recommend this book if you are looking for something rich to curl up with, next to a good cup of tea. Leave it at home if you’re just going to dip your toes in during your fifteen minute subway ride. This is a book to be savored in long draughts.
Exploring Eliza 