For August 8, 2011 Assignment

Review: The Lovely Bones (book)

The Lovely Bones is a novel written by Alice Sebold. The book is based on a mystery that is haunting the Salmon family when their oldest child of fourteen was raped and murdered. The novel uses many metaphors and details to describe the horror that the young girl, Susie Salmon, went through.

The criminal of this murder is nothing more but the next door neighbor of the family. When Susie was murdered she was taken to “her heaven” where she can still see and hear everything that goes on but can’t communicate with them in words. Her family tries to cope with the loss of Susie in different ways. Her father becomes obsessed and tries to help the police prove that Mr. Harvey (the murder) is the one who killed his daughter. The mother runs off to California trying to forget everything that goes on leaving behind her husband and two remaining children. Susie’s little brother is the one who manages to see more to the murder then everyone else “don’t you see her?” he repeats in the book as he tries to tell his playmates and family that he can see Susie and she tries to get in touch with them. Franny a former social worker helps the young girl in heaven as she has to make the transformation of letting go of her loved ones on order to move on to the rest of her life in the real heaven.

This book captures the importance of dealing with family and emotional problems. Coping with these problems are different within the characters.  “The lovely bones” is the significance of what was left of her and her contact to the world. The struggle the young girl went through not only when living the horror of her murder but also letting go of what she had in order for her and her family to be at peace.

 

The reviews I found where from two different sources. The first one was from this website. http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/lovely_bones/. However I could not find the author of this review. Compared to the second review I found that was from http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/14/books/what-remains.html?pagewanted=3&src=pm. This second website was from the New York Times and was written by Katherine Bouton. The second review was published on July 14, 2002.

Both the reviews give the main plot of the book. In the first review it was just a small brief paragraph as to what happen. It also gave its opinion in the end saying that the book was recommended.  The New York Times article has its review with more in-depth detail as to what occurred in the book and the meanings. It also compares other books from the author itself and other books similar to it. It gives a brief description as to the time period when the book came out with a similar story of a fourteen year old girl getting kidnapped.

I believe that the first book review is not as good as the second one. I agree with the second one because to me that was a real review since it was longer and more detailed. Although these reviews are different they as well agree with each other because they both catch the concept of coping with problems and letting go.