Blurb : The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (2002)

The story…

The Lovely Bones is the story of a young teenager called Susie Salmon, with a typical American life : a warm and happy family life (parents,  sister and brother, grandma, etc.), good level at school, nice friends, and so on. 

The book starts with her murder by a man called Mr. Harvey : their weirdo neighbor who lives alone and gains his living by making and selling doll houses. From then on, Susie lives in her heaven with friends she finds over there and watches the world, mainly her own family and friends on Earth from above.

There is a series of events going on, starting by the rush of the parents to find their beloved daughter, not believing she was dead at first, and struggling to deny the proofs. Little by little, as time goes by, they are “forced” to accept the truth. At the same time, Susie’s dad who was particularly close to her, begins to expect Mr. Harvey and becomes almost convinced (after some short conversations with him) that he is Susie’s murderer. Her daughter Lindsey, Susie’s beloved sister, has got the same feeling and tries, one day, to spy on Harvey’s house when he’s away. But the killer returns before Lindsey can find anything more than the map of the underground den where Harvey had murdered Susie. Before the police can catch him, Harvey manages to leave the city. Later on, the police discover that Harvey has murdered a whole bunch of young girls after having harassed them just as he had done with Susie…

Time goes on:  Abigail, Susie’s mother cheats on her husband Jack, Lindsey marries Samuel, and has a daughter, and Harvey dies accidentally, falling off a snowy slope, while harassing a potential victim…

Susie finds the occasion once, to change bodies with Ruth, a weird girl of her school who had sensed Susie’s spirit pass by her the night of the murder. Changing bodies with Ruth, Susie can be with Ray (a boy who was in love with her at school) for a while, and then she turns back to her heaven.

What I thought about it

On the whole, the story is rather interesting and original. But the progression is sometimes a bit too slow, which makes some passages seem too long and even a bit boring.  

Another fact is that there is no particular literary style. The story is neither totally focused on Harvey being sued by the police, nor on Susie’s feelings towards her family and friends. It’s a little of all and nothing in particular. It’s not necessarily a negative point but I think it’s important to consider for those who might think that it’s a police novel, which is not the case at all.

In a  nutshell, I think that the best adjective to describe this novel would be “original”, not only the plot, but also the mixture of styles and feelings, and the presence of weird and unusual events (switching bodies, making contact with Earth via objects, etc.) But for those who are not fond of (science) fiction it might be a bit boring and too unrealistic sometimes.

Valeh