» The Lovely Bones — Alice Sebold.

Monday, April 30, 2012
4:13 PM
[ 0 comments ]

I meant to read this because I saw the movie advert, and it looked good. Thus, since I prefer to read books before movies, I picked this up.

Susie Salmon is raped and brutally murdered by a neighbour, her body cut up into pieces, stuffed into a safe, and thrown into a sinkhole. Here we learn the story of her life and her family, and how humans on Earth cope with loss of such a bright young girl.

Susie is an incredibly dull narrator. I could not feel any of her emotion at all, and that caused the novel to have no specific mood or atmosphere. Just monotone paragraphs, one after the other.

The writing style is really something. It appears that Miss Sebold tries to be creative and play around with words, and it is nice that she experiments, but results are quite bizzare at times. We have Susie's mother buttering toast with her tears, which I am not certain how she does. During most long paragraphs of descriptions I zone out, only to realize I read three pages and do not remember anything about them.

It moved along very slowly. The only "action" we get is at the beginning, when the man rapes Susie. That is all. It is upsetting that the author had such an amazing idea, and did not execute it in a fascinating manner. It is only a novel about people, their lives, and pages upon pages of description.

Now, the beginning was interesting, as well as the ending. Some characters were very likeable, however, there were also those that were not. Also, what Susie did at the end disgusted me completely, when she took over Ruth's body. Just no.

Would I recommend this? It really depends if you are willing to read about peoples' lives. The whole topic of overcoming grief is foreign to me, and maybe that is why I just could not find the charm in this novel.

rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

sviristelle. 

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