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The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold Rating: ••• (Recommended)
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Good Grief First-time novelist Alice Sebold drew me in on the first page of The Lovely Bones, and kept me flipping pages until I closed the last page, spent with sadness, exhilaration, laughter, grief and wonder. The narrator of The Lovely Bones is Susie Salmon who was murdered by a neighbor in December 1973 in a field near her Pennsylvania home. She’s narrating both from heaven and earth, which she visits often. Sebold’s image of heaven reminded me of Joseph Heller’s masterful approach over twenty-five years ago in Good as Gold. Here’s an excerpt of Sebold’s view as told by Susie: “When I first entered heaven I thought everyone saw what I saw. That in everyone’s heaven there were soccer goalposts in the distance and lumbering women throwing shot put and javelin. That all the buildings were like suburban northeast high schools built in the 1960s. Large, squat buildings spread out on dismally landscaped sandy lots, with overhangs and open spaces to make them feel modern. My favorite part was how the colored blocks were turquoise and orange, just like the blocks in Fairfax High. Sometimes, on Earth, I had made my father drive me by Fairfax High so I could imagine myself there. Following the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades of middle school, high school would have been a fresh start. When I got to Fairfax High I would insist on being called Suzanne. I would wear my hair feathered or up in a bun. I would have a body that the boys wanted and the girls envied, but I’d be so nice on top of it all that they would feel too guilty to do anything but worship me. I liked to think of myself – having reached a sort of queenly status – as protecting misfit kids in the cafeteria. When someone taunted Clive Saunders for walking like a girl, I would deliver swift vengeance with my foot to the taunter’s less-protected parts. When the boys teased Phoebe Hart for her sizeable breasts, I would give a speech on why boob jokes weren’t funny. I had to forget that I too had made lists in the margins of my notebook when Phoebe walked by: Winnebagos, Hoo-has, Johnny Yellows. At the end of my reveries, I sat in the back of the car as my father drove. I was beyond reproach. I would overtake high school in a matter of days, not years, or, inexplicably, earn an Oscar for Best Actress during my junior year. These were my dreams on Earth. After a few days in heaven, I realized that the javelin-throwers and the shot-putters and the boys who played basketball on the cracked blacktop were all in their own version of heaven. Theirs just fit with mine – didn’t duplicate it precisely, but had a lot of the same things going on inside.” The things going on inside all the characters in The Living Bones will bring your heart to your throat on many pages. You’re likely to remember this book for a long time. Steve Hopkins, July 24, 2002
ã 2002 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for this book appeared in the August 2002 issue of Executive Times For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 Phone: 708-466-4650 • Fax: 708-386-8687 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com www.hopkinsandcompany.com