Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

I have wanted to read the lovely bones for a while and on a recent visit to my second family I found it among my best friend's book shelf! So here's a quick look into my experience of this book. One evening on the way home from school Susie Salmon is murdered, by someone she knows and it shocks her whole neighbourhood. Who could have wanted to kill a fourteen year old little girl? What could have she have done for someone to want to harm her? Susie wonders these things too. Why did he kill me? What was wrong with him? But Susie has other questions too and other worries like how her death is affecting her family? What will happen to her brother ...  Read the complete review

When we are directed towards a particular book, and have platitudes of "sensational" and "it'll change your life" rammed down our throats I think we have a tendency to raise our expectations enormously and become hyper critical and unforgiving. I remind myself of this as I write this review because I am fully aware that at least part of my bitterness in regards to the novel is unfair, and founded in the irritation that springs from people constantly waxing lyrical about its status as some sort of classic. The story begins with Suzie the fourteen year old who is raped and then killed. From this point on we see, from Suzie's point ...  Read the complete review

Suzie Salmon was only 14 years old when George Harvey raped and murdered her in a room he dug out under the frozen cornfields. Alice Sebold's novel "Lovely Bones" is Suzie's observations of life on earth, after she's dead and is in heaven. Yes, I know this sounds a bit strange, and could easily have been very morbid or creepy. It also could have been horribly sentimental and maudlin. Instead, "Lovely Bones" is one of the more beautifully written stories around. First of all, Sebold's use of the dead Suzie in heaven as the narrator is a stroke of genius. It is very rare that a writer is able to write in first person, omnipresent voice ...  Read the complete review

'My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen years old when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighbourhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him about fertilizer.' And so here begins one of the most heartbreaking books that I have ever read (and considering my usual choice in literature that is quite an achievement). It's horrifying in its realism, and heartbreaking in its detail. The novel can't be counted as a murder mystery, because you as the reader know who committed the crime very early on. It isn't yet another biographical sob story, because it isn't real. And yet it's ...  Read the complete review

I was lent this book around 5 years ago by my A Level English Literature teacher and have to say, despite the cold, hard rock that swings in my chest, I cried on finishing this book. A powerfully emotive story, this shaped my belief in Alice Sebold as being a wonderful author who offers us a rare and interesting perspective; the story of Suzie Salmon who is raped and murdered aged 14 by a neighbour called George Harvey who buries her in a constructed hole in the corn fields near her home. Having no expectations for this story, I was shocked and intrigued from the start. It is hard to explain how easily you are led into this beautifully written novel when you ...  Read the complete review