The Lovely Bones Book Review
A book I read recently is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. A warning to the reader that this book deals with difficult topics like rape, murder, and various acts of violence, so if these themes are triggering to you, this is not the right book for you.
The Lovely Bones is about a fourteen year old girl named Susie Salmon who is raped and then murdered by her strange neighbor, Mr. Harvey, on a walk home from school. Susie watches the Earth from her personal heaven as her family tries to figure out who killed her. Since her death, things in the Salmon family have not been going well. At first, they think she has only gone missing, but as days turn into weeks with Susie's disappearance, they start to believe that she is dead. Susie watches her families different stages of grief and wishes she could be alive again. The investigation for her murder continues, but eventually slows to a complete stop. Will the Salmon family ever figure out who murdered their beloved daughter? Or will it her death continue to be a mystery? You will have to read to find out.
One of the important characters in The Lovely Bones is Lindsey, Susie's younger sister. I choose to highlight Lindsey because of the way she dealt with Susie's death. Lindsey was as shocked as the rest of her family, but was also quick to take action in investigating Mr. Harvey and what he could have to do with her sister's death. As her family slowly recovered from accepting that they would never see Susie again, Lindsey seemed to move on from her sister's death a lot faster despite how close she was to Susie when she was living. Her character develops a lot during the years after Susie's death and she continued to be the strong young woman Susie had always seen her as. Lindsey's contributions to the plot makes The Lovely Bones a more intriguing book.
Even though it was a bit hard to read at times, I enjoyed reading about how the characters found their way out of the challenging scenes. I found the perspectives of the different characters engaging and the author wrote the book in a way that the reader can understand how different people can let go and move on from a tragedy like the one depicted in this book. The Lovely Bones is very good and I recommend it to anyone who is interested.
-Ellen
Great review Ellen! I watched the movie adaptation of this book and I totally agree it was a little hard to watch and process at times just cause of the topics it involved. I also think you make a really good point about how this author's writing. I think seeing how different characters cope with a huge loss made this book worthwhile to me as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recommendation Ellen! The Lovely Bones sounds like a good book and very complicated with so many hard topics and different character perspectives. Your description of the characters, specifically Lindsay also make it sound more interesting. Now I'm curious about what happens later in the book, like if her mystery ever gets solved, so I'll have to look for it next time I'm at the library!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the review Ellen! It seems like The Lovely Bones approaches a number of difficult topics in a really unique way. It's especially interesting that the author chose to keep Lindsey as a character throughout the book, even after her death. I really liked your analysis of Susie the way she coped with the tragedy--moving on faster than other family members. Thanks again for the recommendation!
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