Alice Sebold
Title
The novel's title stems from a line toward the end of the novel, in which Susie ponders her friends' and family's newfound strength after her death:
"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections —
sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that
happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold
the world without me in it. The events my death brought were merely the bones of
a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The
price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life."
Synopsis
On December 6, 1973 in Norristown, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, Susie Salmon takes a shortcut home from her school. She is approached by a neighbor, George Harvey, a man in his mid-30s who lives alone and builds dollhouses for a living. He persuades her to enter an underground den he has recently built nearby. He claims that he built it for the kids in the neighborhood. Once she enters, he rapes her and then murders her, dismembering her body and putting it in a safe. Susie's spirit flees toward her personal heaven.
The Salmon family is at first reluctant to accept that Susie has been killed, but then accepts this when Susie's hat was found. The police talk to Harvey, find him odd but see no other reason to suspect him. Jack, Susie's father, becomes suspicious and later begins to obsess about Harvey. Susie's sister Lindsey comes to share these suspicions. Jack, consumed with guilt over not having been able to protect his daughter, remains on extended leave from work and increasingly isolates himself at home. Meanwhile Buckley, the youngest child, tries to make sense of all this as he starts school.
One day late in the summer a detective named Len Fenerman comes to tell the Salmons that the police have exhausted all leads and are dropping the investigation. That night in his study, Jack looks out the window and sees a flashlight in the cornfield. Believing it to be Harvey returning to destroy evidence, he runs out to confront him with a baseball bat. It turns out to be Susie's best friend, Clarissa, and her boyfriend Brian looking for Susie. Brian and Jack struggle, and Brian hits Jack with the bat. As a result he has to have knee replacement surgery. In the wake of this, his wife Abigail begins having an affair with Fenerman, who is a widower.
Still suspicious, Lindsey sneaks into Harvey's house and finds a drawing of the pit, but is forced to leave when Harvey returns prematurely. Sensing danger, Harvey leaves Lansdale as soon as possible and becomes a drifter. A year later the police bulldoze the cornfield and turn up a Coke bottle from the night of the murder with Harvey's and Susie's Connecticut discovers the body of another one of Harvey's victims, and one of Susie's charms nearby. In 1981, a detective in Connecticut links the charm to Susie's murder and calls Fenerman. As they uncover further evidence, the police realize that Harvey is a serial killer who preys on young girls. At about the same time, Susie sees into his traumatic childhood, and develops a grudging pity for her killer.
The following winter Abigail leaves her husband, going to her father's old cabin in New Hampshire and then moving to California, taking a job at a winery. As a result, her alcoholic mother, Grandma Lynn, moves into the Salmons' home to help her son-in-law care for Buckley and Lindsey.
Lindsey and her boyfriend Samuel Heckler become engaged, find an old house in the woods owned by a classmate's father, and decide to fix it up and live there. Sometime after the celebration, while arguing with Buckley, Jack suffers from a heart attack. The emergency prompts Abigail to return from California, but the reunion is tempered by Buckley's lingering bitterness at her for having abandoned him and his father.
Meanwhile, Harvey returns to Norristown, which has become more developed. He explores his old neighborhood and notices the school is being expanded into the cornfield where he murdered Susie. He drives by the sinkhole where Susie's body rests, and where Ruth Connors and Ray Singh are standing. Ruth, an old classmate of Susie's who had felt Susie's spirit go past her after her murder, senses the women Harvey has killed and is overcome. Susie, looking down from heaven, is also overwhelmed with emotion and the two girls exchange positions. Susie, her spirit now in Ruth's body, connects with Ray, who had a crush on Susie in school, and had made plans to go out with her a few days before the murder. Ray senses Susie's presence, and takes advantage of the fact he has Susie back with him for the time being. Susie took the opportunity to fall in love, instead of pursuing her murderer. Afterward, Susie returns to heaven.
She moves on into the larger heaven, still watching earthbound events from time to time. She sees her sister's newborn baby girl, who is named Abigail Suzanne. One day she spies Harvey getting off a Greyhound bus at a diner in New Hampshire in early spring. Behind the diner he sees a young woman and attempts to speak to her, but she rebuffs him. Susie notices some large icicles hanging from the roof, and after the woman leaves, one falls and hits Harvey on the head, knocking him into a nearby ravine and ultimately killing him.
The novel ends with Susie showing us Lindsey's newborn daughter, then tracking away to a newer house where a man has finally found Susie's old charm bracelet. "This little girl's grown up by now," his wife says. "Almost. Not quite," Susie's narrative voice rejoins. "I wish you all a long and happy life."
Characters
Susie Salmon
A 14-year-old girl who is murdered in the first chapter, and narrates the novel from heaven.
Jack Salmon
Susie's father, who works for an insurance agency in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
Abigail Salmon, her mother, whose growing family frustrates her youthful dreams and later has an affair with Detective Len Fenerman.
Lindsey Salmon
Susie's sister, a year younger than she is, thought of as the smartest.
Buckley Salmon, Susie's brother, ten years younger than she is. His unplanned birth forced Abigail to cancel her plans for a teaching career. He sometimes sees Susie while she watches him in her heaven.
Grandma Lynn
Abigail's mother, an eccentric alcoholic who comes to live with her son-in-law and grandchildren after her daughter leaves.
George Harvey
Tthe Salmons' neighbor, who kills Susie and goes unpunished, even though the Salmons come to suspect him, then leaves Lansdale to kill again. Throughout the novel she refers to him as Mr. Harvey, the name she had addressed him by in life.
Ruth Connors
Aa girl Susie went to school with, whom her dead spirit touches as she leaves the earth. She becomes fascinated with Susie, despite barely having known her in her life, and devotes her life to writing about the visions of the dead she sees.
Ray Singh
A boy from India, (via England), the first and only boy to kiss Susie, and later, becomes Ruth's friend. Was first suspected by the police of murdering Susie, but later proves his alibi.
Ruana Singh
Ray's mother, with whom Abigail Salmon sometimes smokes cigarettes.
Samuel Heckler
Lindsey's boyfriend and later her husband.
Hal Heckler
Sameul's older brother who runs a motorcycle repair shop.
Len Fenerman
The police detective in charge of investigating Susie's death and finds her elbow. His wife commits suicide and he later has an affair with Abigail.
Clarissa
Susie's best friend on Earth. Susie explains that she admired Clarissa because she was always allowed to do things Susie was not, like wear platform shoes and smoke. She has a boyfriend named Brian.
Holly
Susie's best friend in heaven. While the text does not say so explicitly, it is implied she is Vietnamese American. She has no accent, although she did on earth, and took her name from Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Her own life and death are never expanded upon.
Mr. DeWitt
The boy's soccer coach at school the coach said to him that Susie came to see him last night. Mr. DeWitt encourages Lindsey, a successful athlete, to try out for his team.
Mrs. DeWitt
Mr. DeWitt's wife, an English teacher at Susie's school. She teaches both Lindsey and Susie.
Holiday
Susie's dog.
Personal Reflections
‘The Lovely Bones’ is a touching story about life after death, and the story plots caught my attention immediately after I read the synopsis off the back of the book. It seemed like an enigmatic story, and it amazed me that Alice Sebold, the author, could come up with such a mind-wrecking plot and turn it into a five hundred plus pages book filled with creatively written emotions and sentiments.
One of the main reasons I wanted this book so much because the movie was airing worldwide, and I wanted to read the book before even seeing the trailer online. The story first started with Susie exclaiming that she was already dead, living in her heaven where she got to do everything she liked. It was almost like a dream come true, Susie had everything she ever wanted and wished for –except being alive again.
Watching over her family and friends from heaven, Susie realised how much she missed her life on Earth, and watched woefully at her sister growing up, doing all the things she was never going to be able to do. She watched her family grieve over her death, watched her father lose his mind, her mother turn to another man for comfort, and her sister trying to be a tough cookie even though Susie knew her sister was aching inside.
The way Alice Sebold managed to write so emotionally made me feel sentimental when I was reading the book. Especially after I finished the story, a remaining sourness still lingered in my mind’s corner, reminding me about how Susie coped with her new home, and could still watch Earth despite her absence. ‘The Lovely Bones’ had even inspired me to write my own story of the same genre, and it was indeed hard to imagine my own ideas concerning life after death without copying Alice Sebold’s idea entirely.
This story provided a new perspective towards heaven and its perks, but it was definitely worth the read.
Rating
9/10
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