The Lovely Bones

I previously rated this book three stars. Later when I decided to read it again I could not help but wonder what “possessed” (you will realize after reading the book that this is in fact, a pun. ) me to give it three stars.

The idea behind the book is brilliant. A girl Susie is raped and murdered on her way home from school by her neighbour. She is then stuck somewhere between Earth and Heaven, watching her loved ones cope with the grief of her death while her attacker goes unpunished. The blurb was interesting enough for me to read in spite of not having any romance in it. It sounded like such a promising read.

And it was too, for the first ten pages or so. It starts with Susie being attacked and the scene is powerful and realistic. This scene is probably the highest point of the whole book beacuse it goes entirely downhill from here. There are a bunch of flat cliche characters with equally flat thought sin the head. Susie's father starts to neglect his family and his wife finds comfort in the arms of the detective with a tragic past. And then there are metaphors that make no sense : “The snow was falling lightly, like a flurry of small hands...” Hands. Not cotton or clouds or a million other things that are white or cold or both. I previously rated this book three stars. Later when I decided to read it again I could not help but wonder what “possessed” (you will realize after reading the book that this is in fact, a pun. ) me to give it three stars.

The idea behind the book is brilliant. A girl Susie is raped and murdered on her way home from school by her neighbour. She is then stuck somewhere between Earth and Heaven, watching her loved ones cope with the grief of her death while her attacker goes unpunished. The blurb was interesting enough for me to read in spite of not having any romance in it. It sounded like such a promising read.

And it was too, for the first ten pages or so. It starts with Susie being attacked and the scene is powerful and realistic. This scene is probably the highest point of the whole book beacuse it goes entirely downhill from here. There are a bunch of flat cliche characters with equally flat thought sin the head. Susie's father starts to neglect his family and his wife finds comfort in the arms of the detective with a tragic past. And then there are metaphors that make no sense : “The snow was falling lightly, like a flurry of small hands...” Hands. Not cotton or clouds or a million other things that are white or cold or both. And a lot of people have already pointed out this quote in their reviews but I will do it again because of its sheer ridiculousness: “Her pupils dilated, pulsing in and out like small, ferocious olives.”

But the worst part of it was the ending. I'm ashamed to admit that I did not catch it the first time I read it. What would you do if after you died you were given few more minutes to live by possessing someone? Would you like to say goodbye to your family? Help catch your murderer preventing other from suffering your fate? Or maybe you would take advantage of this wonderful situation by
having sex with your childhood crush. That's right. Susie Salmon, victim of rape and murder, uses her precious last few minutes to have sex, with her childhood crush, Ray by possessing the body of a lesbian friend, Ruth. And this is not the kind of voluntary possession where you need to ask permission or anything. So after an out of body experience, Ruth awakes to finds herself raped in a bike shop (I'm not sure why Susie chooses to go there). You would think that being raped herself, Susie would be a tad more considerate. But, obviously the path the true enlightment and nirvana by forgetting all earthly pleasures is by taking in the most earthliest pleasure of all.

While unique in concept, there are so many things that bothered me about this book, I hardly know where to start.

First and foremost, while Sebold achieved great commercial success with this freshman novel, it still reads as a freshman novel. The schtick is clearly the only part of the book thought through and exists to cover the lack of other literary elements.

The first person, omnipresent narrative is clunky and not well explained (if the narrator knows what people are thinking show her figuring out that she knows!) and leads to a very much told, rather than shown, storyline.

The historical setting is both unnecessary and goes unmentioned for several hundred pages, so when reminded 200 pages in that the date is 1977, it is very confusing.

There are a plethora of characters, all of whom seem minor, since not enough time is spent on any for them to be more of a cliche.

The pacing is deplorable – several years will pass over the course of two pages and then 50 pages will be spent on a single day or two, with the years that pass without mention covering such important events as everyone coming to believe the main character's father on the identity of the killer, while the time that we focus on covers the sexual explorations of the main character's little sister. The payload of the book, as it were, comes in the last 20 pages, with no harbinger and no evidence that this was the intended ending.

The intended audience is also unclear. The writing style is clearly too juvenile for a larger adult/older teen audience, and the literary foibles are difficult to overlook, even for the audience of adults/older teens who read young adult fiction. At the same time, the focus on the book being rape and murder and several explicit sexual passages make this book at best uncomfortable reading for young teens.

DNF @ 12%

I never had interest in this book, until I was bored one night and caught the film adaptation on television. The film angered me at times with how poorly some characters were portrayed and how certain elements were handled, so when I heard that the book was better in those regards I decided to try it.

For the first chapter, I was genuinely impressed. I truly felt like I was getting a glimpse of a dead girl's past and my heart wrenched for Susie when she described how she died. Right off the bat, this book got right some of the things I hated about the film.

Whereas in the film Susie is portrayed as stupid and naive (she goes along with Mr. Harvey into the bunker because he says she's the first person he's allowed to see it), the book Susie is much less of a caricature. She goes along because natural curiosity and a love for science - she's fascinated by the room built entirely underground - make her ignore the warning bells in her mind. She dismisses fear of him as mere quirkiness because she's a child who doesn't realize anything terrible could come of ignoring her gut instincts about him. And, where the film has Susie run away without realizing she's dead (in a way where even the viewers are uncertain), the book doesn't shy away from showing us that Susie was raped and murdered. The film could and should have portrayed this in a frantic, albeit non-explicit manner, since it has such a huge difference on the overall tone of the story.

With a strong start at fixing things I disliked in the film, I had high hopes for the novel. After all, I find the premise intriguing and the first chapter is both well-paced and well-characterized, even if also not a particularly great example of writing skill. Unfortunately, the high expectations I set crashed and burned quickly.

Things get boring fast. Elements which should be touched upon longer (the police being racist idiots and assuming the boy who left her a love letter had killed her, for example) are brushed past in a couple paragraphs where unnecessary detail (such as how her sister came to be known as gifted/brainy in school before Susie was even dead) drags on for pages. I felt as if only the first chapter and a half - at most - were touched by an editor and the rest was a chaotic rough draft.

Then there's the introduction of a nonsensical and inconsistent element: Susie speaks of past events she never witnessed and inner thoughts of the living in a manner which honestly feels like the author forgot she was writing in first person instead of third. Susie doesn't just guess at things, she outright knows what people think and what they've done in private moments of their pasts, as if upon dying she became some kind of preternatural, omniscient being. I don't like it, because it chips away at the suspension of disbelief and raises far more questions about the mechanics of death in this world than will ever be answered.

By ten percent, the beginning of chapter three, I was no longer engaged by what I was reading. I think it had something to do with a musical duet being described as “a crazy schizoid solace” - the first in what would soon become a barrage of poorly thought out descriptors. Were I not determined to meet a book goal in 2019, I likely would have given up on this book back then. Instead, I decided to put the book aside for a while and return later... only to leave it shelved until now, Novemver 2020. Returning felt like a chore, but I gave it an honest attempt.

Utimately, I don't like this book. I hate the writing style that took over after the opening chapter. I hate how much of a slog it is to get through unnecessary details and try to decipher what's happening. I'm disappointed and exhausted of crappy books this year and ready to move on to something I actually like.