Rating: 
Summary: Amazing wordsmithing
Review: I read this book in one night, I kept trying to go to sleep and my mind kept taking me back to it. I have already recommended it to friends, one of whom is currently reading it. I thought the writing was superb. The characters are multi demensional and there aren't any easy answers given. I appreciated that this devestating story didn't just rush from beginning to end, but followed the story for as many years as it took for the characters to begin dealing with their grief and lost dreams. Excellant
Rating: 
Summary: an emotional roller coaster
Review: After reading a write up of this book in Time magazine, I had to have it. I was not dissapointed. The details of the crime will choke you up, but are handled in a tasteful manner (considering the subject). It is interesting the way the author weaves in additional story lines that are equally good. You are literally sucked in emotionally. Waiting for answers along with the family, and somehow hoping that through your own imagination the story will take a particular course. I have never read a book in which the author was so creative. My only criticism of the book would be that I found myself having to backtrack a few times to figure out either who was speaking, or the time frame in which the action was happening. I have already begun passing around the book for other people to read, something I very rarely do. It is definately worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Hype hype go away
Review: I loved the book, hated the hype. I know it can't be helped but I'm always afraid of people who thrust Bridges of Madison County at me and told me, with tears in their eyes, that it would CHANGE MY LIFE...okay, it did not. End of that subject.
But it seemed like LB would appeal to those same readers.
So I quickly bought LB as soon as I saw the hype begin. It was a wondeful first novel by a talented writer. Her heaven sounds good enough to me that I might have to reconsider my whole "heaven" thing. Besides, she put dogs in her heaven so the book got an automatic 3 stars just for that.
Susie, the murdered girl narrator is believable and without a shred of self pity or angst. Her story unfolds much like you would expect it to as she describes the aftermath of disaster. I loved the grandma, was puzzled by the mother and thought she captured the sister, brother and murderer very well. I was glad she didn't go into any kind of poor murderer he had a terrible life, thing. Ya gotta figure he did. And I'm glad she stuck it to him in the end...
She really captured my interest with her portrayal of the father and I was touched by his travels through grief, despair, revenge and losses...
Enjoy the book. It's well under the hype radar but well worth it as a good read.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful little book
Review: This is one novel I rushed through not just because it was well-written and fascinating (and it is both of those things) but also because I really didn't want to stop somewhere and be stuck in the grieving process. I wanted to proceed with the book so that I wouldn't have to linger with the family of a girl who was brutally raped and killed and sit in their skin as her whereabouts remain a mystery. The scope is really rather small for a book which takes on the issue of what happens after one dies. Sebold gives a quick outline of how Susie's heaven seems, what it feels like for her and how it changes as she allows the past to recede from her. However, there is no real emphasis on what this heaven is and who goes there. Is there an alternative place? Will Susie's killer ultimately wind up near her? These questions aren't really Sebold's concern. Even so, the tight coil of pain that grips Susie's family is stunning to encounter. By the end, I was a little weary of the one character who seems to have a paranormal connection to Susie and all her dead (and surprisingly anonymous) friends. Ruth is reduced to a conduit for Susie's earthly concerns and Sebold carries this to its ultimate conclusion in a way that really does border on the truly creepy. However, the novel steps away from the flirtation with ghostliness and really does try to examine how horror enters our lives so swiftly and devastatingly and yet it does get better. The excrutiating process is genuinely credible, especially in the cases of the father and sister. The mother's ultimate vacation from the pain seems vague and surreal but is not entirely bizarre in the face of her loss. All this being said, though, this is not a novel that stays with you. It is absolutely riveting while you're reading but it is so specific to this family's loss that it lacks the resonance of loss that one might expect. Is it better than most things out there? Yes, it is but that probably won't give this novel the sort of afterlife to which it aspires.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling Depiction of Humanity
Review: This was a wonderful book. I felt the author really understood emotion and the grieving process. I enjoyed seeing the different aspect of grief and life from the point of view of many different characters. I feel the author has great knowledge of humanity in many senses. The Lovely Bones is a book that helps us see our own mortality and the people we touch during our lives. It is touch and sad but overall a great great book!!
Rating:
Summary: Lovely Perspective
Review: The odd title (not connected to the crime) and cover art attracted me to this book, as I had not previously heard of the author. I was immediately intrigued with the narrator and her detached perspective about her demise. Instead of being thrown into the horror of it all, the reader is carefully given a glimpse of all that happens afterward. Through Susie, we are privy to the feelings and changes that her father, mother, younger sister and brother all experience. She is with them. We hear what her friends think and know, what they wish for. And time passes; life goes on for them all as Susie watches. The poignancy of all life's significant events are not lost to her, but we know Susie's pain about the loss of an earthly life, of not being able to participate in all that life offers. If someone approached this book thinking it to be a murder mystery, rushing through the beautiful language, the myriad personae Siebold presents to us so eloquently, wanting some kind of solution to the crime, then they will have missed the whole point of the book. We know "who done it" in the first chapter. This book is about people and the effect of a senseless act on their lives. Too often in our world, those who have lost someone in this fashion never have a resolution. Siebold has given us an idea of what that must be like. For Susie, there is a resolution, and we do obtain satisfaction from that. Truly one of the most beautifully written books I have read. How refreshing to have gotten a new and blissfully different perspective on heaven and what an afterlife could be like.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Reject The Point Of View
Review: It seems that some of the criticism stems from an unusual point of view (POV) -- that in which the pov is from the murdered victim. Those who criticize The Lovely Bones for that reason must also do the same to the film American Beauty, and, moreso, The Diary of Anne Frank. The concept of speaking beyond the grave, from Heaven in this case, is not new, but it is done well here and in a unique context -- of visualizing her death's impact on her family, and that her consciousness survives in the present tense. That a form of contact is made serves the wishfulness of the loving survivors, and is well-within the realm of stories in which the spirit of the soul exists. None of this denigrates the story; to the contrary, all this adds to it. It's a story of love and want that refuses to tie all things up in neat little happy endings. Thus the very critics, in their criticism, have defined some of the very reasons why The Lovely Bones is fine literature that will survive the years while flash-in-the-pan commercial literature will die out and be forgotten. Open your minds, heart, and imagination, and enjoy this story of the human condition.
Rating:
Summary: hauntingly, horrifyingly, hearbreakingly, lovely
Review: There isn't much I can write about this book that a million book reviewers and the 260+ online reviewers before me haven't already written, so I'll just say this... The Lovely Bones is NOT an inspirational novel. It is not a "lite" beach read. If you're looking for that, than look elsewhere. This is without a doubt the most astonishing book I've ever read. I burst into tears in the middle of my local [bookstore] while reading the last page of the first chapter. (...) The way Sebold was able to capture Susie's gentle innocence and her murderer's remorseless brutality without using with having to use those words blew my mind in a way nothing else ever will. The remaining chapter are every bit as wonderful. I bought the book immediately after my Borders cry-fest and I've read it five times since. Alice Sebold is a genius, period. This book is brilliant, period... I will never, ever forget Susie. She IS my generation's Holden.
Rating:
Summary: great book
Review: this was a very good book, i could not put it down! although it was a little disgusting in details i thouroughly enjoyed it. i have never experienced such a moving and erie feeling in my life. Thank you Alise Sebold for writing this book.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Book THIS YEAR
Review: I recommend this book to anyone who likes to read. I could not stop reading it. This book was riveting, suspenseful, sad, true, honest, life-like and beautifully written. After I read it, I went back and re-read the last two chapters again. I will read this one over and over and cannot stop talking about it. Read it NOW! Do not delay.
What a way to spend part of my summer vacation!
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