Title: The Lovely BonesAuthor: Alice Sebold
Publication Date: 2002
Number of Pages: 328
Genre: Fiction
Geographical Setting: suburban Pennsylvania (outside of Philadelphia)
Time period: 1970s
Series: N/A
Plot: Fourteen year old Susie is raped and murdered by a neighborhood man. From her heaven, she watches her family, friends, the community and her murderer throughout the years.
Subject Headings: murder, rape, crimes against teens, murder victim’s family, heaven
Appeal: Sebold’s heaven is one where wishes are granted, a personalized heaven that may be shared with others there when wants overlap—this is not a religious heaven. The description of the rape and murder is chilling but not salacious or exploitive. Family dynamics—mother/daughter, father/daughter, husband/wife, older sister/younger sister. Life of a mother who still desires her life as a woman first (her freedoms, her intellectual life). Families of murder victims and their lives after the event, the search for the killer, the search for closure.
If you liked The Lovely Bones, you might enjoy: Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter. Anne Ursu’s Spilling Clarence. Laura Moriarty’s The Center of Everything.
