The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

In all this craziness, I forgot that L was driving up to Northern California last weekend with her mom and sister, who are visiting from the east coast. On Saturday morning, E said, “Hey, aren’t we supposed to have dinner with L tonight?” Oh yeah!

The three of them arrived at our house that evening, and it was such a treat. I haven’t seen L’s mom or her sister since we graduated from high school, fifteen years ago. L’s sister was only twelve then, and look at her now! So poised and mature at 27, and so much like L too. I showed them around our house. L spotted a copy of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold lying on my desk.

“I L-oooved this book,” she breathed. I made a bit of a face. “What? You didn’t like it?”

“I’m only halfway through, but, I don’t know… it’s really depressing.”

“Yeah, it is depressing.”

“I mean, it’s really depressing.”

I finished The Lovely Bones yesterday, and while it does get more uplifting in the second half, I don’t think I liked it that much. I liked the writing; it certainly kept my attention throughout the book, and was a quick read while still being beautiful. But I didn’t care much for the subject or the way Sebold let out bits of information that never led anywhere or were oddly disconnected to the fabric of the story.

I don’t mean that the plot was disjointed—well, it was, but that’s what I liked about it. I mean that there were many instances where small events and clues were never followed up on. I understand that things in real life do not always fall so neatly into the resolutions that we expect of novels, but why write about them if they don’t go anywhere?

The Lovely Bones also reminded me very much of Peace Like a River. There was something lovely about the spiritual nature of the characters in both novels, but both of them, I felt, crossed the thin shimmering line between the beauty of a mysterious spirituality and hokey-ness. No, I didn’t like the ending of either.

Sometimes I think L and I have the opposite taste in books (she loved Cold Mountain too). But I keep recommending books to her, and I keep reading books that she recommends. Sometimes we get a good one, so we keep trying.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold