The Lovely Bones

Rating:
Summary: An amazing adventure!!! Read it!!!
Review: If one book could make you feel every emotion imaginable, The Lovely Bones is that book. From pain to sorrow to humor, this meaningful adventure takes you through a journey you've never seen before. It displays a message of hope, love, and trust, giving you an entirely new outlook on life, death, and heaven. If that one book could also teach you that little things can sometimes be just as meaningful as big ones, The Lovely Bones is again that book. I loved this book from start to finish, and it gave me a feeling I've never experienced before as a reader. This was the feeling of all my emotions combining and twisting into a giant knot.

The Lovely Bones travels through the journey of a family who lost their fourteen-year-old daughter. Telling her own story of being raped and murdered, Susie Salmon is already in heaven as the book begins. Throughout the novel, Susie sits in her gazebo in heaven watching her family on Earth. When her family receives news of her death, they each react in different ways. Her mother is overwhelmed with grief and becomes emotionally disengaged from the rest of the family. To escape her misery, she travels to California. The family, meanwhile, tries to stay together, each one struggling in his or her own way. Over the years, the Salmon family gradually recovers from Susie's death. At the end of the novel, they are all reunited both physically and emotionally when Susie's father has a heart attack. I'd like to say that they all lived happily ever after (which they did, unless the story continues after the end of the book).

Susie's character is unique and quite fascinating, with qualities unlike many others. She is thoughtful and always intrigued by the feelings of others, which aren't hard to know from her omnipresent perch in heaven. Her observant qualities show as she watches her family and friends on earth almost as if it were all a movie. She is, at the same time, sweet-hearted, showing love and compassion for everyone, even those she does not know very well. As she learns that she will someday have to be placed as a part of the past, she opens her mind and as stays beside her family as long as she can until that day. Susie is a wonderful character, someone I would definitely like to meet. Her interesting and passionate qualities are what make her unique.

With its amazing adventures unwinding, The Lovely Bones is certainly at the top of my list of favorites. If I were to rate it on a scale of one to five, I would give it a five in an instant. This story has opened up my mind to a whole new world and has given me an entirely new perspective of life and death. In one scene of the book, Buckley, Susie's little brother, was in need of understanding her death. At the time, he was only a few years old and could not comprehend the fact that Susie was gone. Using a monopoly board, Susie's father had Buckley take away the shoe, Susie's piece, to show him that she was gone. At reading this, I cried. It was a very memorable part of the book, along with many others. This novel is definitely one of the best I have ever read, and its adventure through the lives of a lonely family seemed so real that I almost wanted to be a part of it.

The Lovely Bones is an amazingly written masterpiece that shows you a different aspect of the meaning of death. The story within its pages is definitely one I'll never forget. Although some parts are difficult and make you want to hide under your covers at night, I would recommend this book to anyone. It can teach us all many lessons about life. From reading this book, I have been given a new way to look at things. If you ever pass by it at a book store or library, do yourself a favor and pick it up. You will not regret reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Lovely Bones!
Review: Here we have Susie Salmon, a mere 14 years of age, and she is murdered. She watches the effects of her murder on her family and friends from Heaven,but unfortunately, in this heaven, there is no God, but it is a place where what you want, you get it.

Susie experiences vicariously through her sister the milestones of growing up, and she eventually sees her friends and family rebuild their lives, which are shattered by grief.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty ordinary
Review: I think the one thing that makes this book worthwhile is the authors poignant and yet not overtly sentimental description of how the love and fondness within a family evolves over time. Other than that, I thought the book exploits our natural fascination with human tragedy (the voyeuristic tendency to want to glimpse into the life of people whose lives are more dramatic than ours) to pass off a rather poorly written story. The characters are prototypical and glossed over. The only relationship that I thought was explored or described to some depth was the one between Lindsey and her father.
The book itself is reasonably interesting but I think the writing is merely passable. I think the book is overhyped and that one's time is better spent reading one of the classics!

Rating:
Summary: I can't believe I finished this book...
Review: I didn't like the book, at all. I thought there were several character flaws. Susie was a dry, sarcastic character, which I found to be more rude and disconnected... I couldn't grow to like her. Her younger sister.. I thought her to be too mean spirited in the beginning.. and felt she cared less about Susie's death.. the only consistency was the parents..

Boring.. dark characters.. a gloomy and grey story. I couldn't grasp the "love" of the story, that so many others claimed to have experienced, after reading this book. Allot of flash backs, and even before Susie was viciously murdered, she seemed to have already been an unhappy girl... This book was recommended to me.. and I'm going to save you the time and trouble.. that I didn't get the opportunity of. I DO not recommend this book. I'm sure everybody loves the ending.. yeah.. it was okay for me.. but wasn't worth the read. A waste of time..

Rating:
Summary: The Lovely Bones
Review: The Lovely Bones is a wonderful book about a 14 year old girl named Susie Salmon who is murdered by a complete stranger. The murder comes as an absolute shock in 1973 to her family, friends and neighbors that surround her in the quiet neighborhood that she lives in. Once you start reading this book it is extremely hard to put it down. The suspense that is involved is amazing.
After Susie is killed she is placed in a division of heaven for people that are not ready to let go of the friends and family that they loved on earth. The heaven is also for people that are having a hard time coming to the realization that they will no longer be able to walk on earth. Here they can watch over everyone that they cared for. They are also able to watch them as they change grow and become older.
As Susie watches from above she comes to realize how hard it is to cope with someone's death. Her death effects people whom she didn't even realize cared. Watching over everyone is more difficult then Susie thought. There are so many times that she just wants to reach out and help and comfort them but yet she can't. Susie also becomes frustrated because the police force can't even find her murder because the evidence so well hidden.
Throughout the book there are so many exciting moments tear jerking moments and moments that will make the reader think of their own life. The story line is touching. The author uses such descriptive language that puts such vivid pictures in your mind that it makes the book stand out from any other book you will ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Get Past Your Reservations and Enjoy
Review: "The Lovely Bones" takes some getting used to. I won't spoil the plot, but it's enough to say that it is told from a very unique point of view. I, personally, found it excellent once I got over my initial reservations. The mixture of sadness and hope is interesting, somewhat reminiscent of "My Fractured Life." The point of view is entirely unique and quite a contrast to the sugar coated "The Five People You Meet in Heaven." All in all, excellent and highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: A great novel clouded by the author's personal experience
Review: Sebold knows how to get a reader's attention with the second sentence of her novel being: "I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." So many authors fail to grab you even in the first two chapters let alone the first two sentences.

Many reviewers have indicated that they found this novel to be sad or unsatisfying because of how Susie's murder is handled. I found neither to be the case. By making the dead girl the omniscient narrator we're soothed by the fact that she lives on and cares for her family even though they are unable to see her.

Despite the magical qualities of heaven, Sebold is able to keep the book realistic by how she handles the murder. Sometimes things aren't as neat and tidy as we'd like. And sometimes we just have to get over it and move on. What happens to Susie's murderer and how the family deals with their lack of knowledge was one of the things that kept it from being a boilerplate genre fluff piece. In the real world you don't get absolute justice and absolute resolution.

While I enjoyed "Bones" immensely, especially on Sebold's combination of fantasy and emotional realism, I had a problem with her perspective on crime in general.

In her memior "Lucky" she writes of being raped in a way similar to how Susie is attacked. It doesn't seem to be a great leap to suggest that she borrowed from her own life to write this novel. This is certainly not a bad thing. However, it seems that her experience has clouded her perspective.

Throughout the novel Ruth is able to see where girls and women have been raped and killed. At no time is she aware of crimes against males. Only women. I didn't count, but it seemed that references to crimes against women - and only women - was contained in at least half a dozen passages, perhaps even more.

If this were a novel without fantasy this might be excused because Sebold could simply present us with a character, for example, who works at a women's shelter and meets victims on a daily basis. But the fanastic abilities of the characters in this book, Susie and Ruth specifically, open up the whole world. It makes no sense to have person with the ability see people's deaths after they've occurred to filter out images according to the victim's sex. But that's exactly what Sebold does do.

Sebold's blind spot, conceivably created by her own horrific experience, doesn't break the novel. But for me it certainly tainted its positive message. As a pro-feminist male I found it annoying, as if the author had an ax to grind, to read passages that seemed like they were written by a young and naive Women's Studies major who can't distinguish between her facts. It's obvious that females constitute the vast majority of rape victims. (It's hard to know the exact figures when males, typically raped as children, hide their experiences.) However, male on male violence is by far more prevalent than male on female. So there needs to be balance. All Sebold had to do was have Ruth's character able to see all crime victims.

Because of this blind spot, I can't give the book five stars.

Rating:
Summary: A Little Slow
Review: I was psyched to read this book because I heard that it was great, but when I actually started reading it, I thought it was boring. It's interesting because it was from Susie's point of view but it was a little slow in places and the flashbacks could have been placed a little better

Rating:
Summary: MASTERPIECE
Review: Susie Salmon, a 14 year old victim of a serial killer tells her tale from her personal heaven and this is one of the most imaginative tales I ever read. She spends much of her time exploring the nature of heaven, though paradoxically, her true idea of heaven is just to be alive and with her family and friends, be able to grow up and enjoy life. She wants to follow lives of people she knew. This is a tale of horror told without hate or bloody details. On the contrary, it is full of love and humor. Of cause, the narrator, Alyssa Bresnahan deserves the best possible marks. Her performance is outstanding.

This is one of these books you cannot put down. You know the end,but you want to get there at a slow pace and make sure that the end is the right one. I think this book is one of the best books written in a long while.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I have read
Review: This certainly isn't a feel good type of book, but the dark, haunting story keeps you hanging on to the end. Once you start reading, you don't want to put it down. The story follows the disappearance of a young girl and the community and family reaction to that. The main character comes alive as she deals with all the things happening in her life. The author does such a good job of evoking feelings in the writer while reading.