The Lovely Bones: Amazon.ca: Alice Sebold: Books

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Book Description

Publication Date: July 3 2002

When we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. This was before milk carton photos and public service announcements, she tells us; back in 1973, when Susie mysteriously disappeared, people still believed these things didn't happen. In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and her own adjustment to the strange new place she finds herself. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. With love, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie watches her family as they cope with their grief, her father embarks on a search for the killer, her sister undertakes a feat of amazing daring, her little brother builds a fort in her honor and begin the difficult process of healing. In the hands of a brilliant novelist, this story of seemingly unbearable tragedy is transformed into a suspenseful and touching story about family, memory, love, heaven, and living.

#outer_postBodyPS { display: none; } #psGradient { display: none; } #psPlaceHolder { display: none; } #psExpand { display: none; } When we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. This was before milk carton photos and public service announcements, she tells us; back in 1973, when Susie mysteriously disappeared, people still believed these things didn't happen. In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and her own adjustment to the strange new place she finds herself. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. With love, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie watches her family as they cope with their grief, her father embarks on a search for the killer, her sister undertakes a feat of amazing daring, her little brother builds a fort in her honor and begin the difficult process of healing. In the hands of a brilliant novelist, this story of seemingly unbearable tragedy is transformed into a suspenseful and touching story about family, memory, love, heaven, and living.

Product Details

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (July 3 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316666343
ISBN-13: 978-0316666343
Product Dimensions: 14.6 x 3.2 x 22.2 cm
Shipping Weight: 454 g

Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2,084 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #160,533 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

From Amazon

On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey.

Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams," where "there were no teachers.... We never had to go inside except for art class.... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue."

The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the edge of the living, always attached to her lost world, following her family's dramas over the years as if watching an episode of My So-Called Afterlife. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on Earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow." Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish, and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings. --Brad Thomas Parsons

From Publishers Weekly

Sebold's first novel after her memoir, Lucky is a small but far from minor miracle. Sebold has taken a grim, media-exploited subject and fashioned from it a story that is both tragic and full of light and grace. The novel begins swiftly. In the second sentence, Sebold's narrator, Susie Salmon, announces, "I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." Susie is taking a shortcut through a cornfield when a neighbor lures her to his hideaway. The description of the crime is chilling, but never vulgar, and Sebold maintains this delicate balance between homely and horrid as she depicts the progress of grief for Susie's family and friends. She captures the odd alliances forged and the relationships ruined: the shattered father who buries his sadness trying to gather evidence, the mother who escapes "her ruined heart, in merciful adultery." At the same time, Sebold brings to life an entire suburban community, from the mortician's son to the handsome biker dropout who quietly helps investigate Susie's murder. Much as this novel is about "the lovely bones" growing around Susie's absence, it is also full of suspense and written in lithe, resilient prose that by itself delights. Sebold's most dazzling stroke, among many bold ones, is to narrate the story from Susie's heaven (a place where wishing is having), providing the warmth of a first-person narration and the freedom of an omniscient one. It might be this that gives Sebold's novel its special flavor, for in Susie's every observation and memory of the smell of skunk or the touch of spider webs is the reminder that life is sweet and funny and surprising.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Extremely disappointed May 8 2005

By Anna

Format:Hardcover

After hearing rave reviews about this book I had very high expectations for it. It seems to be somewhat hard to believe that any book can be intresting when the most important event in the book, the entire climax is in the first chapter. When I was done the first chapter I wondered what the rest of the chapters would be about...well apparently nothing.
I usually finish books in a week or less but I had to stop reading this book halfway through because it was so horrible. I was often afraid to read it because anything regarding murder and rape is a bit intense for me but the way this book presented such a serious event was horrible.
No strong emotions were expressed through any of the characters, especially not the main character who tells this story. Not only did I think the book was poorly written I was also extremely disappointed by the end. This book left me indifferent and it was a big waste of my time. sorry alice. your characters were too flat and just plain dull.

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5.0 out of 5 stars SO SAD Jun 21 2012

By nikki

Format:Mass Market Paperback

The book is detailed and well written. The movie has no comparison. Lovely Bones is a sad story but leaves you hopeful. Great read.

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5.0 out of 5 stars The Lovely Bones- -A lovely novel Indeed Jan 3 2005

By Ariana Marte

Format:Hardcover

This novel deals with the most heartbreaking situation one can go through-- the loss of a loved one in the most inhumane way. Though a fiction story, its detailed language will make you cry and hope, at the same time making you truly believe and forget it's just a book. The descriptive and vivid language will also take a life of its own, easily allowing you to visualize every moment, every cry, and every ravaging stare in a character's eyes. The Lovely Bones is a story that made me believe in the impossible and feel the pain of every character, especially of the narrator. A heart-warming story of love and tragedy full of hope, disappointment, light and heartache; truly a life lesson indeed. And of course, a life lesson you won't be able to put down!

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