Customer Reviews

The Lovely Bones

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1 star:		(203)

 

 

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.

I needed this book for school. This item was new and in perfect condition. I had a fast and accurate delivery. I reccommend this site to all students.

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!

Sebold has one previous work to her credit, that being the nonfiction LUCKY, a haunting account of the author's rape at age 18. THE LOVELY BONES is a haunting work as well, but in the literal sense of the word --- for the narrator of THE LOVELY BONES is a 14-year-old girl murdered during the commission of an unspeakable act committed by a quiet, monstrous man of such vileness that the reader wants nothing other than to reach into the pages of the book, grab him, and rip his face off. The victim, Susie Salmon ("like the fish," as she tells us early on), relates her fate with a poetic matter-of-factness; she is at peace as she narrates, from her heaven, an account of what happened before and after her death as well as the repercussions of her death upon her family. What she wants is that her family achieve peace and that her murderer encounter justice. You can tell THE LOVELY BONES is a going to be sad just by reading the back.....so is that what you want? to cry? just like you did when you read "where the red fern grows" as a child? i think most people picked up this book hoping and praying that it wouldn't be as sad as it seems- and luckily, it isn't. the whole point of the story is how we can overcome loss, even at the darkest hours of our life. i hope that nobody close to me dies in such a horrible way as suzy did, but i know that deep down i will remember this book. hopefully, it gives light to those people who are overcome with terrible loss, and inspiration to those of us who have been lucky enough never to have had a loved one perish. this book is now one of my favorites, because although not all of the characters are likeable, they all overcome some sort of obstacle. If you're one for a page turner like LB, then you might try THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD. It's funny, harrowing, VERY unusual, and above all, enjoyable and frank. Highly recommended.

I had high expectations for Lovely Bones. In concept, it was curious and interesting - a story told from a dead girls' perspective. A victim's story that goes beyond the grieving cycles and imagines a sort of after-life for the teenage Susie Salmon.

For the most part, Lovely Bones delivered. A contrived tale - how can a story from a dead girl not be? But written with warmth and good humour. From her panoptic position in a heaven that looks a little like her school, she watches her family cope with her death and her siblings and friends grow up.

Sometimes, the plot strays into cliches: fractured marriage; catalystic changes for the parents; sister's determination to track down the killer; naming of the child after the dead girl. But the innovative point of telling rescues it from a turgid melodrama that the plot could otherwise be.

Oddly, for a fairly naturalist piece of writing, the ending descends into a bizarre and incongruous scene of super-magical realism. It's a strange choice of ending, because it undermines the intimacy and realism of the novel. Once she becomes supernatural, Suzie's narrative voice no longer seem real or genuine. It seems cheap to trade a consistent tone and the quality of the writing for a "happy" ending that is intensely contrived. Sebold seems keen to offer her protagonist some sort of closure, but is unable to find such closure in more grounded realities. She resorts to ludicruous magical-realism, a la "Ghost" (Demi Moore & Patrick Swayze), spoiling a sensitive and well-crafted and imaginative story.

I'm clearly a minority here, but this book was a waste of time and money. After a good first chapter, the story becomes more and more boring. I ended up skipping bits and pieces in the end... The writing style is mediocre, the psychology of the characters and their interaction very predictable. Some of the events described, and some of the dialogs, were downright ridiculous.

This is a classic illustration of a failed work. The book should be mandatory reading at writer's wrokshops, for it teaches that a facility for writing pretty sentences does not imply an equal facility in creating a readable (never mind great) novel; just as a superb skill in laying bricks does not endow the bricklayer with the capacity to design and build a house.

The first couple of chapters of THE LOVELY BONES are not only readable, but exciting and fine; but soon the reader is dragged through a shapeless, pretentious, and silly meandering that leads to a bland and pointless finale; all along, however, encountering gracious and often gorgeous sentences. Central to the book is the image of a large sinkhole that swallows cars and refrigerators and a safe that contains the bones of the title. Well, not all the bones of the title but most of them. In a way the book itself becomes a sinkhole into which hours of our time and attention are sucked up in a muck of decaying cliches, simplemindedness, and pretentiousness.

Perhaps a strong editor (was any kind of an editor involved in this production?) could have cut through the self-indulgence and imposed on the writer the discipline needed to produce a fine novel. As it stands, THE LOVELY BONES is a most unsatisfactory reading experience.

To me, no book can be a bad book or not worth reading. If it was "bad", then it would not have been allowed to be published for thousands of people to read and critisize. But, I will say that the Lovely Bones was not the best book I've read. I thought the author had a wild imagination and came up with bizarre things to write about, which is a good thing. On the other hand, for me, the style of writing was not adept. It was too fragmented and choppy, hopping from story to story. In the end though, the lesson to be learned from The Lovely Bones is one to always remember. Even though I was not flabbergasted by the novel, I will always remember it.

In "The Lovely Bones," Sebold weaves a story told through the voice of a young girl in heaven as she watches her family go on in their lives after losing her. We learn that Heaven and Earth are very much the same. As time goes on, we grow smarter, learn more...our heavens expand as our world does, we gain wisdom from experience, and even though we are happy, the things we want -- both in heaven and on earth -- are not attainable.
well...a minor "experience" that the main character has at the end defies the message of the book, which was enjoyable until that point.

When you first hear the premise of "The Lovely Bones", about murdered fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon looking down from heaven and narrating the aftermath of the crime on her family, friends, and even the killer himself, how could you not be intrigued? And reading the book is certainly not un-worthwhile.

For the first 4 or 5 chapters I was truly swept away, but then slowly, the brilliant concept that makes the story so original grows to become its downfall. In order for the book's countless characters to remain interesting while being observed from such a lofty point (heaven), each person would have to be twice as sharp and vividly drawn as any character in a more traditional narrative. They're not. I constantly found myself asking "Now who is this person again?". They're described with different names, and they look different from one another, and live in different places, but we never get a real, visceral feeling from each of them. Instead, we're left watching them all from a distance, as though trying to discern them through a blurry telescope.

Speaking objectively about TLB as literature and without sentimentality, the plot is very slender and stretched to its absolute limit across a meager 328 pages. I kept turning them, waiting for a climax, a moment of resolution and closure, but it never quite happens. "The Lovey Bones" evaporates into a mist.

To her credit, author Alice Sebold could have easily succumbed to making TLB so gruesome and sad as to be unreadable, but she always stays just this side of overstatement.

A good novel, but not a great one.