“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 that my death wrought 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 body had been my life.”
The Lovely Bones isn't a book I would normally read, so when I came upon it I was eager to try something new.
I have to say that I loved the first two thirds of the book. In fact I know that Alice Siebol could have found a way to end the book two thirds of the way through and I would have nothing but rave reviews, however...the last third turned into a completely different book that I stopped enjoying :(
The book starts out with the murder of 14 year old Suzie Salmon by her neighbor George Harvey. It goes into some pretty grizzly details and it is hard to fathom. It goes through the subsequent days, weeks, months after she goes missing, all that is found is an elbow.
The book is narrated by Suzie as she observes the world through her heaven. She watches her father and mother fall apart and away from each other, her sister and brother try to cope with her death, her friend Ruth and her boyfriend, her murderer George Harvey.
It is a book about letting go and moving on, not only for the people left behind but for the dead as well. She cheers her family on as they find the missing pieces and have happy moments and she holds on to George Harvey, even reuniting in heaven with girls that he murdered before and after Suzie.
Like I said, for the most part I enjoyed the book, the story, I didn't enjoy the time line and felt that I was left without closure. I wouldn't recommend this book for anyone who reads this blog but may find some people who would enjoy it among my circle of friends.
2 comments:
You are so cute!! You know I couldn't handle this book, but I did really enjoy "The Book Thief" and I am LOVING "These is my words".
I saw the actors talking about the movie on TV one day and I was interested in what it was about; when I realized what the subject was I knew it was something I could not enjoy watching. One day I was in Costco and I saw the book. I picked it up and opened it at a random spot and read a paragraph or two. What I read made me sick so I immediately closed the book. Thanks for sharing your review. I read a little of your other blog and will go back and read more, I like what you are doing. You give me great ideas :-)
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