Famous writer, Virginia Woolf, once said, “The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting through the heart asunder. ” The Lovely Bones is a book about a fourteen year old girl named Susie Salmon. Shortly after the book begins, an abrupt turn takes place; the reader learns that young Susie Salmon was murdered and raped by a man. The rest of the book focuses on the family of Susie Salmon and how the death of their daughter drives them to the brink of insanity. While Alice Sebold explains what’s going on in reality, she also has another part of the story that takes place in Heaven with Susie.
Why would one want to read a book that focuses on grief and depression in the present and after life? The overall story is a very distressing and gloomy story, but yet somehow it leaves the reader feeling the opposite in the end. In Alice Sebold’s novel, The Lovely Bones, the plot is very depressing and tough to read, although, at the end, the book leaves the reader feeling happy and grateful for everything that he/she has. Alice Sebold did very well at making the reader feel something for the characters being affected by the death of Susie Salmon.
By putting in conversations between characters that are feeling the same way, the reader feels a sense of sympathy for the people who loved and adored the caring and beautiful Susie Salmon. The day of the murder, Susie had an amazing and unforgettable day at school. She had a crush on a young man named Ray Singh and Ray came up to her locker that day and metaphorically swept her off her feet. He asked if she would like to go out with him and told her to meet him in the gazebo in the mall. Once she dies though, Ray has a tough time getting over her and he turns to a misunderstood girl names Ruth.
Both Ruth and Susie became closer friends when they bonded over the breathtaking art that Ruth created. “Is she happy? ” “It is heaven, right? ” “But what does that mean? ” The tea was stone-cold and the first bell had already rung. Ruth smiled into her cup. “Well, as my dad would say, it means she’s out of this shithole” (Sebold 32). Ruth, being the misunderstood and misjudged girl, knew that life could be unfair and strike at the wrong place at the wrong time. She did not want to make Ray anymore sad then he already was so she tried to help him cope with what he was feeling.
This story is not so much about the events themselves as it is about overcoming and moving past them” (Horton 366). The Lovely Bones demonstrates the stages of depression and how long and heart-breaking the process can be. It is obvious that Alice Sebold was not writing a book with the intent to make people feel sad and depressed. She is an incredibly talented author who can have such a sad and dark plot, but manage to make the reader feel happy and content with their life. Alice Sebold portrayed all of the characters thoughts and the feelings in a touching and realistic manner.
None of the characters came off as being fake or inconceivable; the feelings of the characters were conveyed onto the reader. For example, one of the most touching parts in the book is when Ray and Ruth are having a conversation shortly after it was announced that Susie Salmon was very possibly murdered. Maybe it is just the word choice that Sebold uses, but she really made the reader feel sympathy for the ones affected by Salmon’s death and anger towards Mr. Harvey. “Do you ever think about her? ” he asked. They were quiet again. “All the time,” Ruth said.
A chill ran down my spine. “Sometimes I think she’s lucky, you know. I hate this place” (Sebold 33). Ray was heartbroken when he heard about Susie and he did not know what to do with himself. He was foreign exchange student and he was new at Susie’s school. She always had an eye for him, but she never made of move because she was too scared of being rejected. The passage makes the reader thankful for what they have and educates the reader on how important every moment is. Ray never knew what was going to happen to Susie, no one did.
After reading this passage the reader learns about how important it is to cherish every moment in life. “As with so many other works of contemporary fiction and film, Alice Sebold’s bestselling novel The Lovely Bones (2002) fulfills our fundamental and indelibly human desires for establishing vital interconnections with the lost friends and loved ones who adorn our personal pasts. Their deaths leave unspeakable voids in our lives that the progress of time and the erosion of memory render ever more vexing and inconsolable with each passing day” (“My Name Was Salmon Like The Fish”).
The Lovely Bones shows how even through all the misery that can be brought upon good people, the world is not over. Susie’s family kept pushing towards feeling happy again even though they knew they would never truly reach that point again. The novel has a very precise way of capturing the idea that no matter how much life can throw at someone, there is always more to come if one keeps pushing past the hard time. Some people describe major conflicts as being like a wave at the beach; Everything is hectic and big when the wave first crashes, but eventually everything returns to being calm and tamed.
I would like to tell you that it is beautiful here, that I am, and you will one day be, forever safe. But this heaven is not about safety just as, in it’s graciousness, it isn’t about gritty reality. We have fun” (Sebold 324). This quote shows the reader how Susie learned to cope with what had happened to her and to her family. Throughout the course of the novel, the point of view switches from Susie in heaven to multiple other characters affected by her death. Susie begins to see that her family is beginning to get better and move on and she finally decides that she is ready to go to heaven.
Originally, she was not ready to let go of her past and say goodbye to her family, but once she sees them start to get better she moves on. “The Lovely Bones is understood by critics as literary comfort food for a post 9/11 public desperate to believe in the happy afterlife of its lost citizens” (“Uneasy Lie the Bones: Alice Sebold’s Postfeminist Gothic”). Sebold’s novel does in fact portray a “happy afterlife,” but it is what makes the book so touching in the eyes and mind of the reader.
It shows how both Susie and her family cope and learn to move on regardless of how much they just wanted it all to stop. For example, Susie’s mother leaves her father once she dies because they both keep arguing over her death and why they can not just put it behind them. In the end, Susie’s mother returns and all begins to fall back into place. That is one of the times Susie realized she might have been ready to go to heaven. In conclusion, even though at first glance and thought the book seems about nothing, but depression and agony, it makes the reader feel grateful for their life in the end.
The way Sebold ended the book could not have been better because she ended the book in the perspective of Susie and you hear about how she is ready to move on and put the past behind her. “Now I am in this place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand. The word my grandfather used was comfort. So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone’s hand and not have to say anything.
Give no story. Make no claim” (Sebold 325). She sees her family happy and realizes that she is content and decides to go join the others like her in heaven. In Alice Sebold’s novel, The Lovely Bones, the plot is very depressing and tough to read, although, at the end, the book leaves the reader feeling happy and grateful for everything that he/she has. No matter how tough times may seem at one point, it is bound to get better; whether it is done in an hour or years, patience leads to better times.