The Lovely Bones

This book caught me off guard. I didn't expect a book so fiercely beautiful and so powerful when I opened it. It'd been sitting on my shelf for the past few years unread, I only began reading it because the film based on it had just come out. But I'm really glad I did.

The story revolves around Susie Salmon, a fourteen year old girl who is murdered in 1973 by a serial killer neighbor. The book deals with the lives of the people close to Susie and how they change as time goes on. There's Susie's father Jack, who becomes obsessed with solving her murder, Susie's younger sister Lindsey, who tries her best to be strong, Susie's mother Abigail, who drifts away from the family, and Rayand Ruth, a boy and girl at Susie's school who both in their way loved Susie and are drawn together by it. And of course there's Mr. Harvey, the murderer himself. Susie, watching in heaven, serves as an omniscient but biased narrator, delving into the thoughts and experiences of the other characters.

Some of the early chapters, dealing with Susie's murder and the various characters attempting to deal with it, are very emotionally powerful and because of it are somewhat hard to read. It can be hard not to be overcome by the grief and pain the characters and Susie experience. But conversely because they are so emotionally powerful that some of these chapters are my favorites in the book. It feels so real that I myself miss Susie and feel sympathy for the characters who are lacking her.

I liked all of the characters, but especially Ruth and Ray, who are drawn together by their common love of Susie. There was just something so powerful and interesting about their relationship, which is completely atypical from the stereotypical relationships one usually encounters in stories. As for the other characters, it is interesting to see how they all evolve over time, how obsessions and traumas over Susie in the short run transform their characters into something different over time, so that when the novel ends 10 years after it starts they no longer resemble themselves from the beginning of the novel. It made them feel like real people to me. Even the psychotically insane Mr. Harvey becomes more sympathetic than you would imagine as the reader is allowed to see what goes on inside his tortured psyche.

The fantasy elements of the story are significantly thinner than I was expecting. We do get some descriptions of the heaven where Susie lives (which is apparently made up mostly of everything you wanted in life), and Susie herself is able to effect certain small events in the narrative occasionally, but the focus is on the living characters mostly and Susie's observations about them. Therefore anyone leery about reading a fantasy novel shouldn't worry abut this one.

I really liked this novel. It has great characters and is immensely emotionally powerful. I reccomend it to anyone willing to deal with the painful emotions it can evoke in the early chapters, as it is a true masterpiece.