First Pick: The Lovely Bones

In “The Lovely Bones”, the protagonist of the story is a normal 14 year old American girl living during the 1970’s. However, the difference from other stories is that Susie Salmon was brutally raped, murdered, and dismembered. The story is of her family and the search for her murderer. She resides up above in heaven where she watches over her family. Meanwhile, her family grieves; she looks after them and her friends. Alice Sebold writes a story in which she draws from her own experience. Her other book, “Lucky” is a memoir in which she discusses her rape and her search for her rapist and the journey taken through the legal system. “Lucky” comes from the fact that she finds herself lucky because a woman was raped, murdered, and dismembered in the small alley that she was raped. Sebold‘s “The Lovely Bones” is about the other woman that was not so lucky.

“The Lovely Bones” begins with “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973” in this sentence the reader realizes that this story will be bluntly narrated (1). Nothing will be held back and details of her life and the lives of others will be revealed. Susie feels as though she was destined to misfortune when her grandmother says that since she saved Buckley’s life (Her younger brother) she is fortuned to live a long and happy life.

The search for Susie’s murderer begins to become interesting when Mr. Salmon suspects Mr. Harvey (who we know from the beginning of the novel is the murderer). Mr. Salmon heads out to the cornfield when he sees a light coming from there. Expecting to see Mr. Harvey he grabs a bat to confront him. Instead he is met by a young girl and her boyfriend. Mr. Salmon is attacked and hit with the bat. The novel introduces suspense in every chapter because after this incident Lindsey (Susie’s younger sister) still being suspicious, breaks into Mr. Harvey’s house and steals a drawing of the underground structure were Susie was murdered. However, Mr. Harvey leaves town. Mr. Harvey is not caught even though later there is evidence that makes him an official suspect.

Sebold’s title comes from a line towards the end of the novel in which she says:

“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 (320).”

The lovely bones do not belong to the victim but to the idea that bones are the foundation on which living things are built. This is what gives Susie the strength and understanding to move on in heaven.

The novel introduces suspense and makes the reader develop an emotional attachment with not only Susie but also her entire family. Sebold was able to make her reader’s feel what her characters feel through life and death.