The Lovely Bones

Title: The Lovely Bones
Author: Alice Sebold
Published: This edition (with the movie cover) is from 2009
Genre: Murder ballad
Pages: 328


Soooo... I watched the movie since I like Peter Jackson's work, and wasn't going to read the book (at least yet) since I have a biiiiiig To Read -pile sitting here already, but then I happened to read how different the movie is from the book, and got intrigued. And, yeah. The movie is a bit like a children's version, all the more disturbing (or adult) bits left out, except for the murder, of course, since that's kind of the point, and although I love all the colour and the scenery and the lead actors, too, the book is so much better. And so much wetter. Man, I cried.

But yes. For those who don't know, The Lovely Bones is the story of Susie Salmon, who was murdered at the age of 14, in 1973. She goes to her heaven, but stays around, keeping an eye on her family and the man who killed her (the actor who played the murderer in the movie was so creepy). With no body, no proper suspects, her family has a hard time coping with her sudden disappearance and apparent murder.

Did I like it? Yes. So much that, when usually I only read in the buses, I couldn't always put this one down when I got home, either. Well written, touching, and easy to keep up with, even when the narration does skip from one place to another quite much.


"Mr. Harvey made me lie still underneath him and listen to the beating of his heart and the beating of mine. How mine skipped like a rabbit, and how his thudded, a hammer against cloth. We lay there with our bodies touching, and, as I shook, a powerful knowledge took hold. He had done this thing to me and I had lived. That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart. I smelled his breath. The dark earth surrounding us smelled like what it was, moist dirt where worms and animals lived their daily lives. I could have yelled for hours.
"I knew he was going to kill me. I did not realize then that I was an animal already dying."


Did I say well written? Let's make it beautifully written, actually.