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Title: The Lovely Bones: A Novel by Alice Sebold ISBN: 0-316-66634-3 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 03 July, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.82 (1899 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Ignore the hype, enjoy the book
Comment: The Lovely Bones falls into the rare category of novels that are still in hardback, still high on the NY Times Bestseller list after an entire year, and compelling enough that I'm writing a review of it six months after I read it. The formula is simple:
It's a gimmick (girl narrating from beyond the grave) attached to a decent novel. It's not the next To Kill a Mockingbird, it's not going to be on high school reading lists twenty years from now, and if you're expecting that I think you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
I think it would appeal to people who read Danielle Steele or James Patterson and want something a tad more literary; and to those who read John Irving or Joyce Carol Oates who want a good, quick beach novel; it's not going to appeal to people who prefer Joyce or Hegel or Baudelaire, to men whose wives force them to read it, or to people who expect that it's going to change their lives.
To me it holds a certain sentimentality because Sebold really marvelously captures the heart of a suburban teenage girl, and I think anyone who ever was one will especially love it.
Looking back at other reviews, some of the sentences *were* clunky, but I guess I was too caught up in the story to notice. And the supernatural scene that occurs at the end is wacky, but I loved it.
So suspend disbelief and just *enjoy* it - and I guarantee you'll be glad you read it.
Rating: 3
Summary: These bones need some flesh!
Comment: This is the type of novel where you read the opening chapters over about 30 times but struggle to finish the rest of it. Alice Sebold excels at the sections which are her own experience thinly disguised as fiction but on the evidence here she's no novel writer. Unfortunately Alice paints herself into a corner by killing off her best character right at the beginning of the book (ok she's still around to narrate the story, but she has no interaction with the other characters which limits her effectiveness). Instead of carrying on with the story of Susie's murder and the consequences she fills the remaining chapters with boring stock characters and situations gleaned from popular fiction and films such as 'Ghost' and 'The Sixth Sense' (the alcoholic grandmother in particular seems to have wandered in from another novel). I felt very cheated by the conclusion - especially as the author teases us by suggesting that Susie's body will be found and then moves on to a completely different - and ridiculous payoff. The only thing that kept me reading was the hope that the killer would be caught (in real life even the dumbest cop could hardly fail to suspect him); that Susie's body would be found and buried; that her family would be granted some kind of peace and that Susie herself would be empowered to move on to some new stage and break away from the past. I'm not going to go into the bad writing, unbelievable behaviour of characters (sample: a recently bereaved father tacitly encourages his only remaining daughter to break into the house of the [person] who murdered her sister!) or numerous continuity errors here but where was the editor? Someone should have told AS that her manuscript needed to be completely redrafted before it got to the publication stage, but then I guess they know this kind of stuff will sell shedloads of copies so why bother?
Rating: 4
Summary: The Lovely Bones
Comment: The Lovely Bones is about a girl name Susie Salmon. Growing up in the sixties, Susie lead a normal life until she was thirteen years old. On her way home from school one day, Susie was kidnapped and murdered in the field near her school. That is where the story begins. The story is about Susie, watching from heaven, her family and friends cope with their loss.
The Lovely Bones was a very worth while read. The author is very good at drawing the reader in and fully discribing the emotions or the characters. It's an excellent book with many twists and turns that will make you want to keep reading.
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Title: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd ISBN: 0142001740 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 28 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown ISBN: 0385504209 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Life of Pi by Yann Martel ISBN: 0156027321 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Lucky : A Memoir by Alice Sebold ISBN: 0316096199 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom ISBN: 0786868716 Publisher: Hyperion Press Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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