Wishful thinking. That's how I describe Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. Shoot. If heaven's like this book describes and if I get to come back and experience one thing I regretted not doing, sign me up. I'll leave on the first bus/train/whatever scheduled for tomorrow.
Beyond that: Only infrequently am I capable of pinpointing what makes a book a bestseller. For me, Lovely Bones was way too long and way too schmaltzy. But then, maybe length and schmaltz are musts for bestsellers. I will grant that first-person from a fourteen-year-old murder victim (Susie Salmon) is an interesting premise, and I did dog-ear pages. Let's see if I can remember why.
1) On heaven: "Our heaven had an ice cream shop where, when you asked for peppermint stick ice cream, no one ever said, 'It's seasonal'; it had a newspaper where our pictures appeared a lot and made us look important; it had real men in it and beautiful women too, because Holly (a heavenly friend) and I were devoted to fashion magazines." (page 21) Catchy details, but they're not setting the heaven bar real high.
2) Occasionally Ms Sebold comes up with what I'll call a "wow" sentence, one that express a thought (sometimes complicated, sometimes not) in amazingly simple yet appropriate terms. "I knew gloves meant you were an adult and mittens meant you weren't. (page 58) Cool. Or sweet.
3) In heaven Susie explains to Franny, a mother-substitute, why everyone is trying to protect Buckley, Susie's younger brother, from knowledge about her murder. "'Too young,' I said to Franny. 'Where to you think imaginary friends come from?' she said." (page 103) Interesting. As an only child, I had imaginary siblings. Guess they came from the same place.
4) "One of the blessings of my heaven is that I can go back to these moments .... I reach my hand across the Inbetween and take the hand ...." (page 170) I love the concepts of both individualized heavens and "the Inbetween."
5) On pages 222 and 223 there's a wonderful section where Susie is able to see what several important people in her life are doing, all at the same time. The passages work well and illustrate another aspect of the individualized heavens.
6) A friend of Susie's—while she was still alive—is Ruth, a woman who keeps secrets and, coincidentally, ends up in New York. "They were all things she would not give away in New York, where she watched others tell their drunken bar stories, prostituting their families and traumas for popularity and booze. These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors." (page 281) Shamefaced, I remember moments of my own youth and wish I had been as wise as Ruth.
7) Part of a conversation between Susie's mother and father near the end of the book:
Quote:
"So if I tell you Susie was in the room ten minutes ago, what would you say?"
"I'd say you were insane and probably right." (page 319)
Support that yes, one can be both--right and insane--at the same time.
So, after seven impressive moments, do I recommend the book or not? I'm not sure, but I'm leaning toward not. My friend Tessa says a growing sub-genre of romance is romance with a tinge of supernatural. (I guess the current vampire rage would be the extreme of the subdivision.) Whatever. I've now read—or tried to read—four books of this ilk. Truthfully, I'm not a fan.
