Title: The Lovely Bones
Author: Alice Sebold
Genre: fiction
First sentence: My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.
This was the most original book that I have read in quite awhile. The narrator of the story, Susie, is the murder victim. We see her family, her friends, and even her murderer, Mr. Harvey, in the days and years after her death through her eyes.
She leads us down that road as her friends and her 'crush' Ray try to understand and come to terms with her murder. As her family disintegrates, she begins to see them as individuals - even as those around them on Earth only see them as shadows of Susie.
Her father is convinced he knows who committed the crime and one night he follows a light into a neighbor's cornfield, only to be clobbered with his own baseball bat by some innocent high school kids. This is the last straw for Susie's mother. Her mother's loneliness is only amplified with Susie's death and she seeks comfort away from her husband. This eventually leads her to the other side of the country where she tries to forget.
Grandma Lynn moves in with her dad, brother Buckley and sister Lyndsey to try to help them cope with Susie's loss and their abandonment by their mother. The police have pretty much told the family that they have no leads and they are closing the investigation so Lyndsey decides to go looking for evidence herself. She watches Mr. Harvey's house, and one afternoon when he leaves, she breaks in and actually finds some evidence. She barely gets out of the house in time, but Mr. Harvey has seen her so knows that he needs to leave.
Come and read this book and follow her family as they move from her murder and their isolation as they come together year's later and are finally able to say out loud 'Susie is not coming home again.'
This novel was wonderfully written and gives us a picture of one little girl's heaven, which, while not always joyous, is stable and safe. Susie's heaven allows her to mature and move on in much the same way that her family does.
