Volume 3, No. 5 December 6, 2002
Painful ‘Bones’ A Review By Elizabeth H. Raley There are so many different ideas of what happens after death. Depending on religious or personal beliefs, one might believe in heaven or hell, reincarnation, or simply death as the end of existence, period. In "The Lovely Bones," by Alice Sebold, the reader is shown what death holds for 14-year-old Susie Salmon. When Susie is murdered, she leaves behind her sister, brother, parents and a cluster of junior high school friends to go to her type of heaven. From above, she must watch life on Earth go on without her, which is so painful I am not sure why heaven is not called hell in this instance. Sebold’s idea of the afterlife is that each soul has an individual heaven that may overlap with other heavens for people with similar needs. In heaven, Susie meets a girl named Holly and a motherly figure, named Franny. Holly and Franny help her to deal with her new surroundings. On Earth, however, each of Susie’s family members and friends must find their own, individual way to cope with the loss. She gets to see it all and not be able to do anything about it. They aren’t lucky enough to be guided by angels through their grief. The survivors struggle to find Susie’s killer and figure out how to let go and move on with life. It is a tough struggle for everyone and relationships strain and change for all those involved. The development of her school friends is perhaps the most interesting part of the story. She watches as her schoolboy crush, Ray, befriends Ruth, another classmate who just happened to get in her soul’s way on the way out of this world and was literally touched by her. She watches them grow up and lose their innocence while she remains forever young, yet wiser for all that she has witnessed. Sebold writes through Susie’s eyes and does a good job of capturing a growing and changing adolescent mentality. The novel is very sad and depressing, but the hope of capturing the killer and gaining closure is enough to make it almost bearable. Generally the novel is written in a very believable way, save for a couple of parts that border on cliché. Not embracing the idea of an afterlife myself, reading this book reminded me why. No one could let go and move on. It pained me to see it happen. Raley is archivist/photographer for campus photography.
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