LOVELY BONES

Two things struck me after reading this book.

The first thing is the initial murder, including the murderer, Mr. Harvey. After reading the first few pages of this novel, I was greatly disturbed. Susie Salmon, a young teenager, is raped and killed. Mr. Harvey, the murderer, takes her into an underground hole in the cornfield, and after he rapes and kills her, he tears apart her bones and keeps them. Sebold's crude and detailed description of the rape and murder is horrifying. I was thoroughly disgusted and, in my head, I was pleading for Susie to escape. But instead, Mr. Harvey continues in his killing of Susie Salmon. And no, this was not the first, or last, time he commits such a horrid crime. Mr. Harvey has a strange addiction to murder and saving the bones of his victims. So after seeing Mr. Harvey as a crude murderer with no moral center whatsoever, I assumed that he is a one-sided character--simply an insane killer because who murders women (and animals) and--as if that's not bad enough--then proceeds to de-bone them? But author Alice Sebold made me do a double-take. Sebold lets the reader peek into Mr. Harvey's lonely world. Mr. Harvey's house is clean and organized. He does not stay up at night laughing evilly about his next murder. Rather, he spends his time building dollhouses. A murder who builds dollhouses? After discovering a couple of Mr. Harvey's non-murderer-like qualities, I began to wonder what Sebold would reveal next about Mr. Harvey. What was his motive for killing all of these living things? Why did he keep their bones? What's with the dollhouses? But instead, Sebold left us hanging...letting us think of our own answers to these questions.

The second thing that struck me as interesting after reading this book is Sebold's description of heaven. Initially, Susie's heaven is quite dull. There is a school building, some swings, and various familiar and pleasant things from her years on Earth. But there is nothing...magical. Although none of us knows what heaven looks like, we often think of heaven as a beautiful place of infinite content--probably because of the way books and movies have depicted it. Nonetheless, it is slightly disappointing when Susie reaches her quiet, lonely, strange heaven. While Susie's family is struggling to deal with her loss, Susie is struggling to find her place in heaven and comprehend that, although she can watch her family and friends from above, she can't help them. Instead, she has to help herself. Although Susie doesn't grow up on Earth, Sebold shows that Susie is maturing in heaven, in a close-to-human-like fashion. The more she grows and remembers, the more she can discover of heaven.

Overall, The Lovely Bones is emotionally draining. Characters make life-changing mistakes and the murderer is not discovered. But through these mistakes and through Sebold's unique plot, interesting questions are raised. For example, why does Sebold create Mr. Harvey as an atypical murderer? Why is heaven depicted the way it is? How can we learn from the shift in relationships throughout the story? How is love complicated by death? Are the actions of Susie’s mother attempts to live without regret? How does death hurt and help simultaneously? And lastly….why dollhouses? (543)