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by: Alice Sebold
List Price: $21.95Amazon.com's Price: $14.93 You Save: $7.02 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780316666343
ISBN: 0316666343
Label: Little, Brown and Company
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 328
Publication Date: 2002-06
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Sales Rank: 23921
Studio: Little, Brown and Company
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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 didnt 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 swingset.) With love, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie watches her family as they cope with their griefher father embarks on a search for the killer, her sister undertakes a feat of amazing daring, her little brother builds a fort in her honorand begin the difficult process of healing. In the hands of a brilliant new novelist, and through the eyes of her winning young heroine, this story of seemingly unbearable tragedy is transformed into a suspenseful, touching, even funny novel about family, memory, love, heaven, and living.
Amazon.com Review:
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 lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years like 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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - The Lovely Bones: A Highly Emotional Journey
Alice Sebold has stated that violence is not unusual and concludes that it is merely a part of life. Through her three books written, including The Lovely Bones, Sebold adjoins those who have witnessed violence with those who have not.
Alice Sebold has written three novels in her writing career. Her first novel, Lucky, is a memoir of her life as an eighteen year old rape victim while she attended Syracuse University in New York. Her other pieces of work also possess some twist ... Read More
Rating:  - The Lovely Bones
This novel is poignant...an excellent read. Very moving. I can't stress enough how great it was to read. If you've ever lost someone, or if you've ever wondered about heaven, this book will move you.
Rating:  - A (Somehow) Unmoving Story About Murder
Everyone raved about this book. I was told by multiple people that I just HAD to read it. I finally read it and am completely underwhelmed.
More than anything, this book feels like it was written for the Lifetime Network crowd: people (primarily women) who have a morbid fascination with bad things happening to other people. The story had a chance to put a unique spin on an oft-told tale, but instead it was completely uninspired and felt like it should be sandwiched between a story about ... Read More
Rating: - An Interesting Tale
I really loved the book, the story and the characters. It was one of the most "realistic' set of characters I've read lately. Only reason it didn't get a 5th star was because the last 1/4 of the book seemed full of un-necessary fluff ... otherwise a great read. I think I'll read her first book now.
Rating: - Wouldn't read it again...
The author's writing in this book is very well done. She describes things very very well.
BUT....the ending was a disappointment. It was missing something, in my opinion.
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