Author: Alice Sebold
Publisher: Little, Brown
Copyright: 2002
ISBN: 9780316044400
Reading Level: Adult
Interest Age: Grade 10 and up
Genre: Issues--Death
Reader’s Annotation: At the beginning of the book, Susie is brutally raped and murdered. Afterward, she watches her family, friends and killer from heaven.
Plot Summary
Susie Salmon, 14 years old, is raped and murdered in the cornfield behind her house. On its way out of the world, her spirit passes through one of her classmates, Ruth. Once Susie is in her personal heaven (in which her teenage wishes, such as having school without teachers, are fulfilled), she observes the family she left behind. Her father becomes obsessed with proving the guilt of a neighbor, Mr. Harvey, whom we know is the real killer but the police won’t charge. Her mother has an affair with the investigator, then leaves the family and moves to California. Her sister Lindsey, just a couple of years younger than Susie, is devastated by her death. But she is resilient, and pretty soon has a serious boyfriend and is putting her athletic gifts to use as the only girl on the school soccer team. The baby of the family, Buckley, is only four when Susie is murdered. Her death casts a pall over his childhood. Susie sometimes tries to show herself to her family, and Buckley is the one who sees her most often. Ruth and Susie’s almost-boyfriend, Ray, are touched by her death, too. Ray is at first suspected of Susie’s murder, and Ruth’s supernatural experience leads her to search for other murdered girls. On the strength of this connection they become friends. Susie watches her murderer, too, as he moves on to other towns and other girls.
Critical Evaluation
A unique writing style and careful observation of character make this dark novel touching and ultimately hopeful. The plot is not the book’s strong point—it meanders through about ten years with highly variable pacing, and toward the end a couple of supernatural resolutions strain the suspension of disbelief. However, there are moments of great suspense, such as when Lindsey breaks into Mr. Harvey’s house looking for evidence of his crime.
Susie’s storytelling is by turns matter-of-fact (she says her last name is Salmon, “like the fish”) and poetic. Her voice is authentically teenagerish—sarcastic, funny, naïve, and sometimes whiny. It remains a constant through the novel, because though other characters change, Susie is stuck at 14. Lindsey is a particular focus, since Susie gets to see through her what her life might have been like had she lived. Susie is touchingly excited when Lindsey brings home a boy for the first time, and watches the development of their relationship avidly and jealously. The book’s greatest strength is in showing how the people Susie left behind gradually, painfully learn to live with her loss. Susie’s description of this growth gives the novel its title—“the lovely bones” are not hers, but the building blocks of the lives the characters fashion for themselves when she is gone.
Curriculum Ties: Health--rape, death
Booktalking Ideas
Describe Susie's heaven
Read the passage in which she shows herself to her father for the first time
Challenge Issues: Disturbing content, violence, sexual content
In the defense file, I will include my library's selection policy, ALA's Library Bill of Rights, ALA's guidelines on free access to libraries for minors (http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpretations/freeaccesslibraries.cfm), and ALA's strategies and tips for dealing with challenges to library materials (http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/challengeslibrarymaterials/copingwithchallenges/strategiestips/index.cfm). I will also include my library's reconsideration form, in case challenges to this book cannot be defused with "tea and sympathy." I'll include positive reviews from School Library Journal, Booklist, and The New York Times Book Review.
About the Author
Rarely has an author had such an impact on international literature with her first novel, especially when it focuses on the dark subjects of rape, child murder, and the dissolution of families. Yet with The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold seemed to manage the impossible.
“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was 14 when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.” So begins The Lovely Bones, one of the best-reviewed novels of the decade. The book quickly became an unprecedented international bestseller, with translations in over 45 languages and American sales alone of over five million copies. In 2009 it was chosen by the Young Adult Library Association as one of its recommended titles for all students (the list is revised every 5 years and used by educators and librarians across the country). Three months after the publication of The Lovely Bones, Sebold’s 1999 memoir Lucky, an account of her rape at the age of 18 and the trial that followed, also rose to number one on The New York Times Bestseller list.
2007 saw publication of The Almost Moon, Sebold's controversial second novel, which began with yet another gripping first sentence: "When all was said and done, killing my mother came easily." Another #1 bestseller, The Almost Moon generated more critical discord -- both laudatory and negative -- than any other novel in memory as Sebold plunged into taboo territories of matricide, mental illness and profound ambivalence about mother/daughter relationships.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Sebold grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and attended Syracuse University as well as the University of Houston and UC Irvine. She has contributed to numerous anthologies and has edited The Best American Short Stories 2009.
A film version of The Lovely Bones (Fall 2009) was adapted, written and directed by Peter Jackson, the Academy Award winning director of “The Lord of the Rings.”
http://www.barclayagency.com/sebold.html
Why is this title included?
Cart identifies The Lovely Bones as an adult book that is a crossover hit with teens.