Susie's Heaven

Writing Style

             Alice Sebold the author of The Lovely Bones. This novel has some different writing techniques. One being that the main character is dead. And since Susie is 14 she is not formal. The point of view is more of a conversation between her and you. Susie is omnipresent and really guides the reader from the past (her murder) to the present (when she catches us up on her present day family) 

Critical Review

            The Lovely Bones is not a book for everyone. This book is heart wrenching and spine tingling. This book is meant for mature readers and all others wouldn’t get it. The first event in the book was Susie Salmon’s murder. Following that was how her family coped and the cops solved the murder.

            This is one book that grabs your attention with the first sentence, “My name is Salmon, like the fish. First name: Susie. I was 14 years old when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. I was here for a moment, then I was gone.” With the character being a 14-year-old who gets raped and murdered, you sympathize as she continues to tell the story from her point of view.

            When you make a bond with a character, whether it be in a book, show, etc. It makes the book more interesting. You don’t want to put down the book because you want to keep reading so you know what happens to the characters. This is the type of book that once you start reading you can’t stop. But, you don’t want it to end.

            While reading this you get pulled into this world where you know the Salmon family. You really care for the characters and those are the best type of books. Being pulled into a different world is the point of reading, and Alice Sebold nailed that when writing this. 

Helpful Links

One link I found to be helpful was the trailer for the movie
Click Here To Watch

Another helpful link is to a website that has a summary of the book and how it was written
Click Here

And lastly is another book review:
 Review

Characters Changing

Main characters can change over the course of a novel and this book is a prime example of that.  

Pain and going through something traumatic changes people a lot. I am not a mother but I know there would be nothing more painful or traumatizing then knowing my child was abducted, raped and then murdered. Abigail Salmon was a great mother and a loving wife. Once everything happened with Susie, she left. She said herself that she couldn’t have ever left her family behind like that before but that she needed to heal.

Lindsey Salmon is another example. Losing an older sister would hurt more than imaginable. Lindsey was a runner and a straight a student. After the death of her sister she found herself breaking into houses, skipping class and run meetings.

The main character, and who’s point of view that the book is told from was Susie Salmon. For obvious reasons Susie changed the most. She was your normal 14-year-old. Crushing on a boy, trying to do well in school, etc. Then, she was murdered. As she continued to tell the story from her point of view, she was watching everyone from Heaven. She changed because she would never be the same again. Even if she did live she went through something traumatic that would change anyone. 

Book Cover

"The Lovely Bones." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 10 June 2016.

Theme

            One theme in this book was that family really is everything. When something tragic happens, like Susie’s abduction, family is always there. For the Salmon family, they were each other’s rocks. After Abigail, Susie’s mother, leaves the rest of the family becomes closer than ever. Lindsey and Jack have a more father-daughterly bond than they ever had before.

            For George Harvey, he doesn’t have that family connection with anyone. Not that not having a family will make you rape and kill young women. But maybe Harvey always longed for that family connection, or a wife of his own so he needed someone.

            Everybody needs somebody, and this book is a great example of that for the reason that without each other or some type of family support, nobody could’ve healed or grieved properly. Having a tight bond with someone, like a father or sibling, is something major for someone healing from something so traumatic. When Abigail left she did it because she didn’t know how to handle what had happened to her daughter. It didn’t take her long to come back, knowing her kids needed a mother and she needed her kids.  

Types of Conflicts

            In The Lovely Bones there is an obvious Man vs. Man conflict. This conflict happened when George Harvey tricked Susie Salmon into going into his underground den. They wrestled around when Susie tried to escape. He threw back onto the ground and eventually murdered her.

            There is also man vs. man conflict when Susie’s father gets beat up in the cornfield.   

Summary

Early December on a chilly day, Susie Salmon,14, is walking home from school as usual and taking her normal shortcut through the cornfield when her 36 year-old neighbor, George Harvey stops her in the middle of the field. He lures her into an underground den that he had created. Once down there, he raped and murdered her.

Susie's spirit eventually leaves her dissembled body and enters her Heaven, where she can look down and watch as her family tries to move on from what they thought was an abduction, until her elbow is found. The rest of her body is thrown into a safe which is eventually put into the towns sinkhole by Harvey

At first the Salmon family didn't know that Susie was killed so Jack, her father, conducts his own investigation looking for his daughter. When he sees a flashlight late at night in the cornfield he assumes its Harvey so he follows it. When he encounters the flashlight and the person behind it, he is surprised that its just a teenage couple. The boy of the couple beats up Jack, leading him to needing knee surgery. As he is recovering from this surgery, Susie's sister, Lindsey continues to investigate Harvey.

One day, Lindsey sneaks into Harvey's house while he is gone. As she is upstairs he comes home, she creeps into a spare bedroom. She lays on the floor trying to stay still as she comes upon a floorboard that is loose and looks like it is removed a lot. She lifts it up to find a blueprint to and underground den and some journals. He barges into the room so grabs the blueprint and jumps out the window. When she confronts the authorities about the discovery, they investigate but only to be left with nothing. Harvey is not arrested but he leaves town.

As he returns years later to check up on everything he left behind he meets this woman at a gas station, only to start stalking her. As he realizes that she has no ride he tries to get her to get into his car, stating that it being February it's cold outside. She refuses so he tries to stand in front of her to be more authoritative. She walks away leaving Harvey standing near the edge of the cliff. An icicle falls from a tree, and hits him on the head. This causes him to fall backwards off the cliff, after several hits he dies. The book ends with this and Susie wishing the reader a "long and happy life."