Rating: 
Summary: Insipid book
Review: Even the dullest teen would people heaven with more imagination than Susie. I picked up this book hoping it would be at least as good as her husband's recent novel, Carter Beats the Devil which was imaginative, and in places quite deft.When she's not forcing the language and imagery, Alice Sebold has got the characters acting on unexplained impulses which baffle and perturb the reader. It feels like it was written in a seminar course and that too many ideas were developed by the group, and then dropped by the writer who couldn't commit. The author's handling of dialogue was particularly clumsy.By the time Susie returns to Earth for a tryst with her sweetie the reader is incredulous at how lame the ending is shaping up to be. Save yourself the time and money and wait until the movie comes out. It will be a big hit with teenagers everywhere.
Rating:
Summary: For adolescents only
Review: Although summer brings on "light reading" madness, and often some real pleasure to even the most serious readers (of which I am one), those lazy hours in the sun are far better spent on a snooze than in reading this feather of a book. The idea is dopey, the telling of the story clumsy, and the plot thoroughly unbelievable. I finished it for a book discussion group, but wished that I hadn't. It is one thing to present an adolescent's view of the world and the afterlife for what it is, quite another to present it as a serious framework for a story about a family's tragedy. There are much better books being published today - thank heaven!
Rating: 
Summary: A truly wonderful novel.
Review: There is nothing so tragic as the violent death of a child. It's something that can tear apart not just the family of the lost, but anyone even remotely connected to them. And this kind of grief is something authors have struggled to describe since the dawn of storytelling -- weaving that sorrow into some of the most painfully beautiful works ever. Until now, however, no one has really explored the grief the dead child experiences -- at having their life taken from them, at having to leave abruptly from the secure warmth and ease of their families and friends. This is a unique and incredibly moving and tender novel written from the point of view of 14 year old Susie Salmon, brutally murdered by a neighbor. The story begins in Susie's first days in heaven, a place where she finds she can have anything she wishes for, except that things she wants most -- to be alive and allowed to grow up. Susie can see the world from heaven (note that she uses a lowercase "h" herself for the word "heaven" until the end of the novel) and so her story tracks not only her own journey of grief, but also that of her parents, her sister, her brother, her friends. Each of them struggling in their own, wholly individual ways. Her father is desperate to catch the killer. Her mother, desperate to move on -- to get away from the horror and pain. Others are consumed by feelings of guilt or anger or fear, sorrow, confusion. Despite the fact that this sounds like it must then be the most depressing novel ever written, it truly isn't. The pain is very real, but Susie herself is actually a rather delightful narrator. She's funny and smart. And a bit on the devious side. She made me laugh, broke my heart, and kept me reading long into the night. She will not easily be forgotten. If you love books that truly impact you -- books that have the potential to change you -- then this is one to add to your list. And while I generally feel a need to warn parents away from stories about lost children (for example, I won't be renting "In The Bedroom" with my mother), this is one I think anyone who has lost a loved one could benefit from reading. Because it wills you to believe "that the dead truly talk to us, that in the air between the living, spirits bob and weave and laugh with us. They are the oxygen we breath." And that is an idea I am happy to accept as true.
Rating: 
Summary: Lost momentum about two-thirds through
Review: Great start. At one point found it difficult to put down. In the beginning the characters were very carefully thought out and quite believable. What had me completely turning pages was watching how the grieving family dealt with MR Harvey, the killer, living in the neighborhood as a free man. But the book seemed to lose coherance about the time he left the neighborhood. Characters started to act in ways I found unconvincing....the "falling out of heaven" and overly sentimental reveries reminded me of bad soap opera with a ghost.....
Rating: 
Summary: It's like after Christmas shopping...
Review: ...Just a lot of pushing and shoving and you still come out with very little at the end. This book leaps out of the gate at the beginning. It starts strong, grabbing you by the collar and giving you a good shake. The tale opens with the aftermath of a young girls rape and murder. The dead girl looks down from heaven, watching her family face the sorrow and confusion, for her murder has not been confirmed, no body has been found, and she has been labled as missing. Alice Sebold did an excellent job with character development. The people in this story seem quite real and she truly managed to capture their grief quite accurately. However, as promising as this book seems at the beginning, don't be fooled. It is only starting a slow, downward spiral. Throughout the book, many loose ends are left untied, as if the author had made specific plans for where the story should go, and then thought, "Nah." This novel did manage to make me quite angry, not so much for the senseless murder, but for the purely wasted potential. Reading this book, I knew it could have been something great. The options for a truly riveting and compelling story were there, but the author didn't use any of them. As I neared the end of the book, I literally said out loud, "Please! Don't bail on the ending! You have to give me SOMETHING remotely interesting for Pete's sake!" Wow, was I ever disappointed. It was as if the author thought her work was done, just for coming up with the idea of having a dead girl as the narrator. Then, once she felt that she had givin the story enough length to call it a novel, she just pulled a simple, cookie-cutter ending out of the air and slapped it on there, so she could call it quits. The hype of this book writes a huge cheque that the story can't cash. If you are looking for something GOOD to read, with a great story, in-depth characters, and something that delivers, then skip this book. Instead, check out "White Oleander," by Janet Fitch, or "I Know This Much Is True," by Wally Lamb.
Rating:
Summary: A unique heavenly view of an earthly brutality
Review: Alice Sebold chose an unusual perspective from which to tell Susie Salmon's (like the fish) horrifying tale. Perhaps the story makes such an impact because it comes on a spate of other similar stories of unsuspecting children who have recently been lured or abducted and who have been subsequently robbed of many, if not all, of the developmental life stages Susie so poignantly desires for herself. Susie is viewing her portion of the earth from her own piece of heaven. It seems that heaven is very much a designer place, a creation of each decedent's own creation. There is no religious vantagepoint, no deity in residence. The deceased can pretty much come and go as they please, appear or almost appear to family members and friends and observe life as they left it. Holly for example, one of heaven's inhabitants, still loves to assist people in her new heavenly home because on earth she was a social worker. There seems to be some unspoken transition from life on earth to getting settled in eternity. Susie has not yet found her niche, though, because she is still very much pre-occupied with the devastation caused by her own disappearance. The reader knows, step-by-step, what occurred and who the perpetrator was but her remaining family members are suffering because of what they don't know, other than the fact that the amount of blood found would indicate that Susie is dead and a body part was unearthed by a neighborhood dog. Sebold's description of Susie's abduction is chilling, perhaps because she was the victim of a brutal crime herself. Interestingly, she also seems to have a knack for describing how lives are subsequently changed, how some survivors become stronger, how others suffer to the point of illness and how still others are resentful of the unspoken ghost that pervades family life in the ensuing years. Though very clever, the story at times becomes extremely fanciful and syrupy as Susie keeps wondering what her romantic life would have been like. It was abruptly ended right after she had experienced her first kiss. Her post mortem seduction of the now grown and college educated student who had given her the first kiss is just one of those "far out" moments! Susie has also had an unexpected impact upon another earthling, Ruth, one of the proverbial unpopular high school girls to be found in most adolescent settings. Susie's spirit literally bumped into Ruth as it was escaping her body following the abduction, rape and murder. Since that time Ruth has sensed the spirit world and often can tell what murder or brutality happened in any given area in which she passes. Overall, even with the New Age touches, the story is well told and often humorous amongst the agonizing pain, suffering and disruption experienced by the Salmon family.
Rating: 
Summary: Heartbreakingly beautiful
Review: I fell under the spell of this beautifully written book and couldn't put it down until the very end....which was the best part of the book. It was bittersweet, melancholy, thought-provoking, heartbreaking and uplifting. I highly recommend it. The characters were as real as your next door neighbor. If you only read one book this year, make it this one. You won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Original, but shallow
Review: While Sebold writes well,and has managed a rare if not unusual feat in relating the narration from a first person perspective with an omniscient point of view, too many emotional details are sentimental rather than profound. Fiction invites the "willing suspension of disbelief," but it must be rooted in reality. How could the protagonist possibly be happy in heaven while viewing the disintegration of her family and the somewhat troubled maturation of her friends while she stays a little girl?If this were told as a fairy tale it would be more successful. Sebold does, however, capture the attitudes, interests, and vocabulary of a fourteen-year old girl, and there are times when the narrative is quite moving.
Rating:
Summary: A ....
Review: What's stunning about this book is the PR and the blindness of most critics who have been doing cartwheels. There is no way at all that this is a convincing voice of a 14-year-old girl. It's too smart, too subtle, too mature, too sophisticated. I could not suspend, no, *crush*, disbelief long enough to enjoy it, and found myself insulted by the author, editor, publisher and reviewers who have put one over on the reading public, which has, sheep-like, made this book a wild success. The book is in its own way as bad as some early Michael Cunningham (A Home at the End of the World) where he has children observing life with the exact same richness of perception as adults. A Reader's Manifesto is absolutely right--reviewers are snowed nowadays by beautiful sentences no matter how opaque, or in this case, how unlikely they are.
Rating:
Summary: Embarrassed
Review: If an imaginitive response to loss is what you want, read Toni Morrison's Beloved. If a thoughtful response to loss is what you want, read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. O'Brien's entire book deals with this theme, but the last story, "The Lives of the Dead," deals movingly with the death of a girl. Sebold's book is simply over-the-top, especially when the narrator inhabits the body of a friend. I felt embarrassed for the writer, the publisher, the agent, and everyone else involved.
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