Reading Response: The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones is a great book. I like how Alice Sebold puts detail into all of the commotion in the book. She is a great writer, and has artistic skill, because it is like when reading the book, you can almost visualize it as a movie, while reading it. I like the Lovely Bones because it is a mixture of genres. It is a mixture of suspense, horror, (has a poetic touch), romance, etc. This book expresses how one life, can affect everyone around something, that used to be.

When reading the book The Lovely Bones, just from the first page you can feel the suspense come in as the beginning sentences state, “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6^th, 1973” I like how the author structured this because she just came right out with the point, instead of the reader having to wait for what the topic of the book was.

This book is very descriptive on the feelings of all of the characters. On how the mother cracks and leave’s her kids on their own, how Buckley, once a cheerful little boy who hid to become a rock, hard as stone and Susie’s father who hangs on to her, as if she is still there, knowing, deep down that she is gone. In the book I think that the strongest connection that Susie has to earth is with her father. This is because when she is alone with him, or she is standing there, he says things out loud because he can sense her, and he talks to her (the most out of some of the other characters in the book).

            When reading the book, you begin to notice that everyone has a connection with Susie. Ruth and Ray are old school friends, Ray who became Susie’s first love, and Ruth who Susie’s never really talked to, but became an impact on Ruth. These two people became Susie’s almost imaginary friends, both talking to Susie. But, they hadn’t known that Susie’s was listening, and was trying to speak back, but since she wasn’t alive, wasn’t real anymore, she couldn’t.

The Lovely Bones also has a mood of mystery throughout the whole book, since Susie’s death has affected everybody, her father being most affected by it. The mystery lingers with every page wondering when Mr. Harvey will be caught, how her mother’s love will turn into rage, when her father will come to realization that she is gone, and nothing can bring her back, when Buckley will crack, when Len Fernerman will solve the gruesome murder, and when Susie will give up on hoping to be alive once again.