
Last week I came home from work and found the novel, "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold, sitting on my reading table. It was a gift from my husband. He rarely buys me books because he knows how fussy I am about literature, so this was quite a surprise. I read the description on the back cover...
"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."
So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling.
I noted the fresh plot and POV of a person's spirit after death and asked my husband where he ever found such an interesting book. He said, "It found me. I was looking for something else, and it was just lying on top of a row of books in the wrong location."
"I'm always keeping an eye out for books like this that delve into the after-life," I said.
He said, "I know. So am I. I knew I had to get it for you."
The book says it was made into a major motion picture, yet I have no memory of that. I'm not a big movie fan. So, I researched it and was happy to see that the movie is coming out soon. I didn't miss it. The copyright for the book is 2002, so I had assumed that the movie was released long ago.
I think the fact that I devoured this book in one week with my busy schedule speaks for itself. This book is mesmerizing. At first I worried that too much focus would fall on the grief of the parents, however Sebold did such a beautiful job of showing their grief through actions that wove a story of their own that I was drawn into the drama mainly by the unpredictability of the characters.
The gaps and transitions in time were handled so smoothly that I found myself giving the nod to each of the author's choices, with one exception. Susie's choice of how to handle a very limited period of time in which she left heaven to be among the living again was difficult to believe, considering her age at death, the circumstances of her death, and the complete lack of responsibility she exhibited over her friend's welfare. I can't say much more without ruining the story. That scene was a complete surprise, though, and I can't complain about unpredictability.
I love a book where no material is extraneous. I felt confident paying attention to detail, because I had confidence that Sebold would weave that detail back into the story later. I'm usually impatient with character memories, because they take away from the forward action of the plot, but every memory within The Lovely Bones was important and written so well that it fit in nicely.
I'm a suspense fan, yet with this book I wasn't consumed with the need to catch the bad guy. What was happening with the mother, whose solution to her grief involved denial and putting distance between her and her reality, was just as interesting as what was happening with the murderer and the murdered. The father's opposite approach to his grief, writing to his daughter in a notebook and tracking down the killer, made for good tension within the family.
The characters outside the family who became deeply involved in the aftermath of Susie's murder were each fascinating in their own way. One would expect Susie's best friend to be strongly affected, but instead it was a girl who Susie spoke to only once, but who had a sixth sense for the paranormal.
The Lovely Bones is a book I plan to hang on to for a second, and maybe third, reading. It's been a while since I've read something that has inspired me to return to my own writing career, and this novel struck some flint within me to attack that blank white page of a word processing document, and better yet, to even finish some of the old novels I started back in the 1980's and 90's instead of just leaving them in that dusty place called unfinished book heaven.

