Fleshing out the Bones (Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold)

Member Name: Ophelia

Product:	Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Date:	23/11/03 (742 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Moving, interesting approach

Disadvantages: -

This is the first published novel of Alice Sebold. For a first novel this is original and captivating and I should certainly be interested to see her later contributions to the literary world.

THE PLOT

Susie Salmon was fourteen when she was raped and murdered by a neighbour. This is not the end but only the beginning of our story, which is written in the first person from the point of view of the dead girl herself.

Although Susie is dead and can live in her Heaven, she is still more emotionally and mentally connected to those she has left behind on Earth. She, therefore, spends much of her time observing her family and through her eyes we see how her death affects them.

Not only do we see how a murder affects those who are left behind but we learn how the transition from living to dead can affect the deceased, as Susie must learn to accept her fate and slowly sever her connections with the living world in order to become completely at peace in her new existence.

Most interestingly we see how the murder of a young girl affects so many other people beyond her immediate family. Like ripples in a pool the shock and pain spreads through neighbours, school friends and acquaintances.

STYLE

This is the only book I have ever encountered that is written by someone who is already dead by the opening sentence. Despite the seemingly contrived nature of the narration it does work. By watching events unfold through the eyes of the murdered girl herself we can experience the aftermath of the deed from inside the very bosom of the family, from an intimate viewpoint, described by someone who not only knows the people involved well and can detect even the smallest changes in them but by someone who now has the ability to read their very thoughts.

Although in one respect it could be argued that the narrative can never be objective, it can also be said that the tale will be a much more honest one than one wr
itten by, for example, a person expressing their own thoughts. Also, a dead girl has no ulterior motives in telling her story and Susie narrates a clear and informative tale, being able to give the in depth feelings of not only her family but any other person whom she choses to observe.

I would have expected that a great deal of such a story would have been taken up with her feelings about the murder itself and her attitude towards the killer. However, although Susie does keep ‘tabs’ on the killer throughout the novel, it seems to be more of a vague curiosity rather than a vengeful interest. Sebold choses to spend very little time discussing the murder or what feelings Susie has about it. This seems to be somewhat of an omission but I believe if this had been gone into in more detail it would have changed the tone of the book completely. As it stands we are more interested in the emotions of Susie’s family and those others who were close to her, whereas if the subject had been treated differently we would have been more concerned with the guilt of the murderer, with his capture and with revenge, which was obviously not the intention of the author. So, although such light treatment of the act of death itself seems unrealistic, it is entirely necessary in order to get involved in the story of the murdered girl’s family and of the way they cope with a Susie-less future.

TOUCHING THE LIVING

In the moments immediately after Susie’s death, her soul rushed towards Heaven and, as it did so, it touched a young girl called Ruth. Ruth was sensitive to this presence and despite not having known Susie well from that moment she became intrigued by her life and her death and began to form what would become a strong and eternal link between herself and the dead girl.

As Ruth reaches adulthood she becomes senstive to the dead and to the vibrations that exist in places where deaths had occurred. Through her clo
se emotional ties to Susie she begins to feel a calling or a debt to other murdered souls. She seeks out murder sites and records what echoes of the past she picks up. In her diary she writes, ‘I hold up bones; I wish like broken glass they could court light....still I try to place these pieces back together, to set them firm, to make murdered girls live again’. This recognition of the dead and of their deaths provides solace to the souls of the dead and so a seemingly morbid and distressing ‘hobby’ gives Ruth a sense of purpose and the fulfilment of a calling.

As Ruth is sensitive to those who have passed on, Susie is sensitive to those who remain living. She can read their thoughts, knows their motives, their emotions and their desires. She can remain close to those she loved, she watches over them and occasionally, when they are in a receptive mood, they can feel her presence. These episodes are explained in an extremely gentle manner by Sebold and in such a matter of fact way that it is impossible to doubt the veracity of what we are told. There are few of us who have not experienced loss at some point and it is hard to read this book without being reminded of them and, in some ways, feeling that we too can remain close to our loved ones who have passed on.

BRUTAL DEATH, GENTLE TALE

The content of the book is such that you would expect it to be a depressing and saddening read, however, this is not the case. Death is not the end but a transitional phase and Sebold’s story is written in such a gentle way that any sadness seems soothed and hope oozes from every page. This is a tale of love, of friendship, of the bonds of family, of hope for the future, of recovery and strength.

The book is intriguing but is not what I would call exciting. It is a gentle story to be read when in a peaceful and contemplative mood and not a book to be picked up when needing a thrill. If a thoughtful, touching
and graceful read is what you are after, this book will fit the bill.

Whatever you find in the telling of the tale you will undoubtedly be left with the strong feeling that those we have lost are not dead and gone forever but that they will always live on through our memories, our thoughts and our families.



OTHER INFO
Publisher: Picador, 20 New Wharf Road, London
Website: www.picador.com and www.lovelybones.co.uk
Price: £6.99
ISBN: 0-330-48538-5

Summary: