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Summary: Lovely Bones
Review: The book The Lovely Bones has given me a whole new look on death and the experience you feel after losing someone in your life. I now feel as though more than ever, that those who have passed on are watching out for us in the higher place. I really liked the book and could relate to and feel for many of the characters. I feel like I have met people who express those emotions just like the characters. From the book I learned how people experience different emotions and feeling after they have lost someone they love. I also learned that people deal with these emotions very differently.
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Summary: This book was a killer
Review: I reluctantly read this book...then couldn't put it down. While this is a good book, it isn't the writing, storyline, etc. that really stands out. It leaves you with a deep appreciation for all the small things in life we take for granted every day. Interesting story, fairly well written, but if you read it next time you think your life sucks, your attitude may be changed by it.
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Summary: Yawn!Yawn!
Review: It would be impossible to count the number of books I have read over the years but I could count on one hand how many I have read to the half way mark then couldn't be bothered to finish - this was one of them. It's such an intriguing idea for a novel yet so little was made of it. It seemed to lack energy and just came across as half-soaked.I kept waiting for it to rev up but after reaching the half way mark only to find it still as ineffectual, I lost interest completely. A work colleague finished reading it but I couldn't even work up the curiosity to ask her what had happened in the end, such was my apathy regarding this novel.
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Summary: Enthralling story
Review: In the winter of 1973, Susie Salmon, age 14, is killed and raped by her strange neighbor, Mr. Harvey, but Susie's story doesn't end there. The novel is told by Susie from Heaven as she continues to watch over everyone she loves--and those she doesn't love. Susie describes Heaven as being a place that caters to your whims -- your own personal heaven. Susie finds she can have anything she wants in Heaven except her life on Earth back.This turned out to be completely different from what I was expecting. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this definitely wasn't it. I was pleasantly surprised with the story. Even though, Susie is dead, she still seems to be going through typical adolescent behavior from Heaven. She dreams about first kisses and speaks on sex, but she no longer has the chance to experience those parts of life. So, she lives her life through her friends and family. Of course, Susie's family--her mother, her father, her brother, and her sister--are effected deeply by her death to the point that their family starts to crumble because of her death, but we're also shown the impact that her death had on her school crush, Ray, and a girl she barely knew, Ruth. It was interesting to see how her family dealt with it and how those outside her family dealt as well. But for all it's good points, there are some things that irked me. Some of the scene involving Ray and Ruth seemed to overshadow the main point. Susie's mother was very underdeveloped. While you could feel empathy for her father and siblings, you really couldn't do anything but dislike Susie's mother because you only saw one side of her. It was like she was a supporting character rather than one of the main characters. Also, The ending dragged a little longer than it should, and honestly, it left me feeling a little dissatisfied in regards to Mr. Harvey. Overall, good read, though.
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Summary: Provoked a sort of wistful aching in my body
Review: I picked this up much to my dismay...I tend to shy away from "Oprah-like" books and Bestsellers alike. I don't like to trust the opinion of the general public. Call me a cynic or call me silly. But this: I picked this up Friday evening. I woke up on Saturday morning, twiddled my thumbs a bit, then hit the light and started voraciously reading again. My best friend was killed when I was 13. This book caused all the memories of the tumult and growth of my teens to come barrelling down on me. Not the most impossible book, but certainly one that will drift over your thoughts after finishing...when you least expect it...
Rating: 
Summary: It's not THAT great.
Review: I decided (like many others) to read this book based on what others had said. I read it with an open mind - finding neither the rape, murder nor the heaven Sebold has created disturbing. But the truth is that this novel is just nothing special. Ray and Ruth's obsession with Susie and her death just seemed werid and boring. I thought more could have been made of Susie's mother and her inner turmoil but the only glimpse we got was how she was so relaxed when alone (from the photograph) as if she was another person. I loved Mrs. Singh's character but was left with only the smell of her exotic cigarttes and her apple pies. I'll admit I got some good thrills from the novel, like when Susie's younger sister goes searching through Mr. Harvey's house...but it didn't pay off. The ending was just a big let down. I couldn't believe that if you died, but were given one more chance for only a few hours to come back to life, that all you would do is sleep with a high school crush. But thats just what Susie did. It's almost as if the author could not be bothered to have to write about the charaters dealing with saying goodbye to Susie and catching her killer if she had spoken to them.
I undestand the connection between Ray...but what a waste of a chance when you have the whole family still trying to come to terms with the loss.
Rating:
Summary: Very engrossing
Review: I could not put this book down, it was beautifully written, and I was happy to see the writing quality stayed high throughout the book. However, I felt a bit lost at the end. I thought maybe Susie's remains would be found since there were some changes going on at the sinkhole. I just fell in love with Susie's character and greedily wanted something horribly cliche to happen at the end, like all of her family members finally join her. As a consolation, the family dog did, and I still will recommend this book.
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Summary: A little miracle
Review: We read this novel in our English class in Germany. It was a little difficult to understand in English, but we found The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold to be a sad and funny book at the same time. The beginning is also the beginning of the plot. Susie, who is narrating the whole story from heaven, is killed by her neighbour Mr Harvey. Susie uses very sensitive words to describe her family's feelings. There is no suspense but the story is so gripping that you cannot stop reading it, because so many things happen simultaneously.
First, Susie's death breaks the whole family. The mother escapes from her sadness and begins an affair. The father sinks in his loneliness, but there are very intersting developments, like her sister Lindsey's relationships, and in the end they are all together and have accepted their loss. The story is very realistic except for the narrative perspective and it is free of irony except for Mr Harvey's death.
Sebold presents a story which is full of sadness, tragedy but also teeming with warmth and freedom. Alice Sebold wrote a fantastic book in which death is depicted in a tragic but also in a comforting way.
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Summary: A brilliant, gripping and fantastic novel
Review: Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones is interesting and full of tragedy. It is about Susie, the main character, who is murdered by her neighbour. After her death she narrates her story from heaven. She observes her family circle which has been broken:
The mother leaves the family and falls in love with the inspector who investigates the neighbour, but the father also cannot move beyond the loss of his daughter. We read the book in the 11th grade in Germany and we really enjoyed it. It is appropriate for school, because we could work with it for a long time. Furthermore, it is easy to read and to understand.
Sebold presents a story which is full of sadness but she also includes irony e.g. by describing the way Mr. Harvey dies. She also depicts the characters' development who grow up and learn to live with Susie's death.
You have to imagine and feel the story to understand the unusual atmosphere in the novel, but this book is not for everybody.
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Summary: AN INSPIRED NOVEL
Review: It is unfair to compare "THE LOVELY BONES" to Alice Sebold's nonfiction "LUCKY," although both are gripping stories. Instead, I am more inclined to compare "THE LOVELY BONES" to books like "MY FRACTURED LIFE" by Rikki Lee Travolta and "THE LOSERS CLUB" by Richard Perez; books that take their inspiration from reality and craftily weave them into novella form. "LUCKY" was Sebold's real account of the trauma of being brutally attacked, sexually assaulted, and left for dead. "THE LOVELY BONES" is the story of a girl who is brutally attacked, sexually assaulted, and does die - and is narrated from the beyond. The inspiration may be obviously familiar to Sebold's nonfiction events, but the novella that is woven from that inspiration is fiction and finely crafted fiction at that. To judge "THE LOVELY BONES" on its own merits puts it in the same league as "MY FRACTURED LIFE", "THE LOSERS CLUB", and "THE DA VINCI CODE."
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