The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Given the glut of reviews on ‘The Lovely Bones’, it seems that this is a very popular novel. Indeed, this book is one of the biggest selling books of the past twenty years on both sides of the Atlantic. It has made Alice Sebold into one of the most prominent modern American writers and has been featured on many different talk shows, arts programmes and critical review shows. Most famously, the book was the winner of the Richard & Judy book club award ...
...a freshman as Syracuse University. The title ‘lucky’ came from a conversation she had with a police officer following the attack, the officer telling Sebold that she was ‘lucky’ because the rapist’s other victims had all been brutally murdered and dismembered. Prior to writing ‘Lucky’, Sebold had drifted into heroin addiction and a quite squalid life but dragged her way back up and became something of a minor celebrity in the US with appearances ...

Ryan74 08.03.2005 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

...except she cannot return to the people she loved on earth. She can only watch their grief. When I saw this book on the library shelf I wasn’t certain that I wanted to read it. I thought that the subject would be depressing and I try not to take my pleasures so sadly. I knew too that the story was narrated from heaven. If the book had a religious theme it would be back in the library before it had chance to grow warm in my hands. The book went home ...
...worth reading. It was the last of my six books to be read though – and then I couldn’t put it down. The rape and murder take place in the first few pages of the novel. It’s an uncomfortable subject but it’s dealt with sensitively. The horror is conveyed, but not milked: “Tell me you love me,” he said. Gently I did. The end came anyway. The rest of the story is told by Susie from Heaven. As a device this works well, allowing the narrator to be ...

SueMagee 03.12.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.” And so begins “The Lovely Bones”, Susie’s story, told as she looks down on the world from her heaven, in the aftermath of her tragic death. Susie’s murder in the cornfield behind her house, by a local man, George Harvey, sends shockwaves through her neighbourhood, her school, her friends and her family. ...
...those closest to her, and the story spans the ten years following her death. She watches as life goes on without her and those who knew her in life move on – at very different paces and in very different ways. Susie’s father is hit the hardest by her death. Suspicious of George Harvey from the outset, he seeks to avenge the murder, but is driven to a near breakdown and ultimately failing physical health. His wife deals with the tragedy ...

Pumpkin 01.12.2003 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

...one because it had outpaced the sales of any other first novel in memory, 925,000 copies in print after 11 printings. It is still in the top twenty best selling novels today. People also tended to say it was compulsive reading. Anne Sebold described it herself once as “It is about the murder and dismemberment of a young girl and she dies in the first chapter. She tells the story in first person. She tells the story of her family and her friends ...
...The story is told by the principal character, the spirit of a murdered teenager. Susie Salmon who is brutally raped and murdered by a psycho serial killer who evades detection by posing convincingly as an innocent, normal (if eccentric) citizen next door. The book starts "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border ...

parker-munn 07.03.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

...wanted it straight away. The wording on the back was enough to convince me. ‘My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighbourhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer’. Such shocking words, yet compelling enough just in a few sentences to lure me into buying it (obviously doesn't take much!). The ...
...starting with very light at the top to royal blue at the bottom. The only picture on the front is of a silver bracelet with a single charm on – a house. This reminds me of the house in the Wizard of Oz, flying through the air towards the end of the film when Dorothy awakens from her dream. This story really gripped me from the start. Susie Salmon is a school girl who is brutally taken from her family and raped and killed by a neighbour. She has ...

kirstymack80 12.09.2003 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

...in a small town in the USA the book chronicles the changes that occur between 1973 and the mid eighties following the brutal murder of Susie Salmon. One of the most intriguing things about the book is that it manages to transcend the clunkiness of a first person tale that ends "And then I died", not least by opening in almost that way: "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." ...
...death allows Susie to see the world and everyone in it in full. She can feel their fear, understand their wonderings and explain why they act as they do. It's a unique and telling perspective; it doesn't leave the reader suffering from a confusion of switching narrative in order to explain why things happen, at the same time it allows for a much more involved and immediate feeling than that of an anonymous narrator. At the centre of the story is ...

hawkida 23.05.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973” You must agree this is an explosive start to any book, I was horrified and wanted to know why, where and how as I am sure you all would. 14 year old Susie Salmon was returning home from school one day, she decides to take a short cut through a cornfield in her neighbourhood because it was snowing, she was returning from Junior ...
...she bumped into her neighbour, the man whom her mother had admired his border flowers and her father once chatted with him about fertilizer, Mr Harvey was a strange man indeed but most thought nothing of it, just a widower who happened to live on his own but always seemed friendly enough. But Mr Harvey was no ordinary man, you see he lured Susie into his little hiding spot, an underground camp he had built himself with promises of a clubhouse the ...

herby30 11.01.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

The first paragraph of The Lovely Bones contains the sentence “ I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6,1973”. The matter of fact way this is presented to the reader belies the horror that it engenders but sets the scene for the way in which the author tells the story. Susie Salmon was murdered and the story centres on the plight of the family left behind with an aching emptiness in their life. Susie observes the action from heaven, which ...
...harps and angels heaven and the spiritual aspect is not overplayed but used as a vehicle for a heartrending view of a disintegrating family. It centres round her father and his desperate attempt to solve the murder and come to terms with his terrible loss. He feels he knows who the murderer is but can’t prove it. The murderer, who makes dolls houses, is in turn most reasonable when questioned by the police and covers his tracks well, hinting at other ...

silver40 20.10.2004 (28.10.2004) · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

...she takes a short-cut through the cornfield, she spots her neighbour. He wants to show her a little hiding spot he has made in the ground for local children to use as a clubhouse. Once lured into the buried camp, Susie soon realises something is horribly wrong. Within minutes, she is brutally raped and murdered. All of this happens in the first fifteen pages of Alice Sebold’s second book: ‘The Lovely Bones’. I don’t think I’ve ever been so rapidly ...
...memoir of her rape at the age of 18 and the harrowing court case that followed. ** THE PLOT ** The book begins with the shocking first sentence: “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973 … My murderer was a man from our neighbourhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertiliser”. Susie Salmon speaks to us from heaven. It looks like her ...

Maia 18.07.2003 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

I have wanted to read the lovely bones for a while and on a recent visit to my second family I found it among my best friend's book shelf! So here's a quick look into my experience of this book. One evening on the way home from school Susie Salmon is murdered, by someone she knows and it shocks her whole neighbourhood. Who could have wanted to kill a fourteen year old little girl? What could have she have done for someone to want to harm her? Susie ...
...Lindsey? Will Susie get the answers to any of her questions from her new home in Heaven?! Over the years Susie watches her family and her friends grow and move on from her death. She watches over the lives of the people who were closest to her in her life on earth. As well as her parents and her brother and sister, these also include the strange girl with the great artistic talent from her High school class Ruth and the Indian boy from her class ...

emsi 10.01.2008 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

...plenty of sun bathing by the pool I needed a book that I could get fully absorbed in. I had read many good reviews about ‘Lovely Bones’ by Alice Sebold and my sister had also read the book and told me how good it was. So for my holiday I borrowed the book from my sister. The cover of the book is mainly light blue and green with the title ‘Lovely Bones’ and the name of the author printed in large letters on the front. The ...
...called Susie Salmon (as in the fish) She is raped and then murdered in a field close to her house. The book is written so that Susie narrates through the book. She tells us about her family, she lives at home with her mother and father, her sister Lindsey who is a year younger than her and 5 year old brother Buckley. They also have a dog called Holiday. Susie describes in detail the day of her death. How she ended up being in the field and talking ...

kellyv43 07.07.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

...say? Brilliant book. THE STORY The Lovely Bones is the story of how the Salmon family cope when their daughter, Susie, who is just 14 years-old, is brutally raped and murdered by a seemingly-harmless loner who lives near them. The story is narrated by Susie herself, looking down on her family in heaven. If you didn't know anything about this book, you might mistake it for a thriller, or even a horror. It isn't about justice or even religion, as ...
...have you, that deals with the sheer grief that comes with bereavement. As she watches over her family, seeing her brother and sister grow up, she finds it extremely difficult, especially when her younger sister turn 14, the same age as Susie was when she died. Her yearning and desperation to finally be allowed to grow up gets stronger and stronger, and she feels desperately unhappy, even in heaven. But in the words of the book, 'life is not quite ...

JessL 03.09.2003 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones is written by Alice Sebold, who is an American author. I have read her previous book, Lucky, which is Alice's story of being raped while at college, and how she progressed after that. Certainly the author's real life experiences have helped her write The Lovely Bones. The narrator of The Lovely Bones is Susie Salmon, a 14 year old girl who was murdered by her 36 year old neighbour (George Harvey) in the cornfield near her home. ...
...no unnecessary graphic details). The book begins with Susie's rape and murder, and then progresses to Susie's entry into heaven, where she is initially confused and struggles to adapt. Susie looks down from heaven onto her family and friends constantly, and also watches her George Harvey's actions. The different stories of her family, friends, and murderer are told from Susie's perspective. Susie also tries to discuss her family's grief, and show ...

Kezza88 10.08.2003 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

...down at my local Asda the other day feeling sorry for myself (full of a cold)and picking up some Beechams, I had a look through the book section as I was overdue for a new read. I couldn't decide between The Lovely Bones or Catherine Elliot's A Married Man so I've ended up getting both! lol After all they weren't expensive at £3.73 each. I'll tell you about the other book once I've read it...;) The Lovely Bones is a very moving story about a little ...
...age (14 yrs old) through the hands of a local man called Mr Harvey. Susie is raped and killed by Mr Harvey in the local cornfield, not far from her home. We then see what happens to her family and how they deal with their bereavement. I started to read this story and my heart went out to Susie straight away. She was stuck in limbo land, as she didn't want to leave her family behind and felt that she hadn't had time to do all the things she wanted ...

mrs_dodger 20.10.2003 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Having read a review on The Lovely Bones written by fellow Ciaoer ~ Maia, I had a strong feeling I was really going to enjoy this book. Author, Alice Sebold writes the book in the eyes and thoughts of rape & murder victim Susie Salmon, who's life was taken on December 6, 1973, aged fourteen years old. She tells the story to us directly, and it feels ever so up-close and personal. Following the events of her cruel murder, Susie watches her family ...
...that cold night. The opening scene of this book is 100% read me material, however, without ruining the storyline too much for those potential readers, I was slightly feeling guilty for wanting to read on. Did I really want to know? With so many real life murders to date, this material, although not especially gruesome as such, did actually make me feel slightly uncomfortable. I do think this kind of feeling depends on the nature of the reader, are ...

miss_motivator 31.07.2003 · Read full review
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Review of The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold