The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Young Adult Drama
ISBN: 0-316-66634-3
Suitable for 15+

Readers Annotation: A teenage girl gets murdered by her neighbor and sees her family cope with life without her from up above.

Plot Summary: Susie Salmon is a cheerful teenage girl living in Pennsylvania. After school one day, she stumbles upon a shortcut to home but not without seeing her neighbor, George Harvey, a secluded private man. He invites her to his underground haven where he rapes and murders her. When her family realizes that she's missing and all the clues point to her death, Susie watches from up above in heaven to see how her family copes. A chain reaction of events occur from Susie's missing body as she sees her family split apart, her dad obsessed with finding her and the killer while her mom is emotionally damaged, shutting herself off from the world. Meanwhile up in heaven, Susie meets another girl who went through a similar event. She starts a new beginning and together, they bond and help each other cope while her family struggles to bring her killer to justice.

Critical Evaluation: For a story that is supposed to focus on Susie, a lot of attention and detail go into Harvey's character. He is well developed with exposition of his life and his motives. As for Susie, it takes a little longer for her character to unravel. The one thing that the reader realizes is that Susie kept the family together as is dissolved shortly after her disappearance. Its that cheerful happy go-lucky personality rubs off not only on the characters but the reader where hope and innocence are preserved even after the brutal killing. The story paces well splitting time between three point of views: Harvey, Susie, and her father. This keeps the story moving and it doesn't dwell on any character to long while also showing what's going on inside their heads. The opinion that heaven is how you depict it allows the reader to use their full imagination, which is a nice touch of hope that coincides with the grief and loss of a loved one; a heartfelt story. And to understand the title, one has to read until the very end, which should keep the reader anticipating.

Author: Alice Sebold was born in 1963 and is an American novelist. She has published three books to date: Lucky, The Lovely Bones, and The Almost Moon. The Lovely Bones was inspired by her own life when she was raped while walking home from campus. By a chance of luck, she recognized her rapist and reported him to the police where he received the maximum sentence. She eventually fell to drug use while trying to pursue her writing career.

She moved to numerous places trying to write her first novel but failed. Finally, she returned to Syracuse University, the scene of her rape, and finished school. She published Lucky, which were accounts of her rape. Her other novels have themes of terror, rape, and hope. Her best selling and most critically acclaimed novel remains The Lovely Bones.

Booktalking Ideas:
1) Rape
2) Murder
3) Grief
4) Coping
5) Heaven
6) Frienship

Challenge Issues: Due to the heavy depictions of rape and murder, this book has some challenge issues.

A librarian should state that the ALA mission is "to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all," which is embodied in the Library Bill of Rights, the Association's basic policy on free access to libraries and library materials. Librarians must act as an extension, making sure that they educate the general public, and themselves, about the nature and importance of intellectual freedom in libraries.

Why Included: I watched the movie before I read the book but I enjoyed the movie so much that I decided to read the book right after.