Lovely Bones, The ~ Alice Sebold ~ 1/03 ~ Book Cl Export

“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. In newspaper photos of missing girls from the seventies, most looked like me: white girls with mousy brown hair. This was before kids of all races and genders started appearing on milk cartons or in the daily mail. It was still back when people believed things like that didn't happen.” From chapter One

In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death, and her own adjustment to the strange new place she finds herself. (It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing set.) In the hands of a brilliant new novelist, and through the eyes of her winning young heroine, this story of seemingly unbearable tragedy is transformed into a suspenseful, touching, even funny novel about family, memory, love, heaven, and living. .................. Publishers Weekly

Chicago Tribune, 6/30/02 “...delicately insightful...sustains a mood that lingers after you've put it down...”

San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, 7/7/02 “...a savagely beautiful story...the Salmon family's tragedy is...palpable and multifaceted...a strange and compelling novel...”
Readers' Guide

Review from Washington Post, Maria Russo

Review from Salon.com

Discussion Leader: Lorrie Gorg

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Hi, everybody! How does this one sound to you? Would you like to join in a discussion of this lovely book? If so, please post in here and tell us of your decision. We need three more names to make a quorum.

The book can be reserved at your library, or available now for a time at B&N at half-price.

Let's hear from you-----everyone is welcome!

Lorrie

Tell me, is this slated for Jan 1st? I must get on the list with this book. I have been forewarned about buying any books before Christmas. Maybe Santa will have it under my tree. If not,there's always the library. I just like my very own book because I like to make notes in it as I'm reading along for discussion.

B&N just informed me that my shipment is in the mail, and "The Lovely Bones" is part of it.

Seems like there is some controversy about the book. Anna Quindlen called it a potential classic (wonder if her publisher is the same one which published "Bones"??). A British reviewer more or less said "what can you expect from a new American writer, given the social and cultural climate in America today..."

It'll be fun to see what I think about it. May lurk and post when you start.

(confusing title: I want to call it "Lovely in her Bones" which was a mystery by Sharyn McCrumb)

ALF!!! and CATBIRD!!! This is great, you wonderful readers.

Yes, Andy, the scheduled date for this discussion is January 2, to give all the New Year's Eve celebrants a chance to survive and cure themselves before the date.

Unfortunately the book won't be out in paperback form until late January, but if you go to Amazon.com they have a good many used and new copies for a decent price. At least with this time gap we will all have a chance to reserve a copy at the library.

Anyone else? Catbird, whether lurking or participating, I sure hope to see you then!

Lorrie

I would love to join this if I find a cheap copy. I've already bought Seven Sisters in hardback, but this is so close to pb time....

Oh, Susan, hang in there, please!!! I do hope you can get an inexpensive copy of this book----I do value your contributions to any discussion, and I am not alone, I know. You always add much to a book discussion, and Betty, also, who has mentioned that she would probably join us. Great beginning!

Lorrie

Hidden behind a note from Microsoft Internet Explorer I updated it and now everytime I come on line it tells me they have a problem and need to close...there is a place for sending an error message and they must be inundated as I have sent dozens. I have finally just parked the darn message as far as I can to one side and just conintue what a headache..Any way I ordered this book as a free one and it is on its way so I will be happy to join the group in JAN by then hopefully visitors and holidays will be over at least for a littel while and I will have time to read...and of course the joy of discussing the book with everyone...Hooray! anna

ANNA FAIR!!!

This is wonderful! By now we have gotten our quorum, so now we can go ahead and make up a more comprehensive heading for this discussion, and then move it over here just before the due date. I'm starting to get really enthusiastic about this book, and I have only read a couple of chapters so far. It's looking like a wonderful read, and I hope we see more books by this new author.

Lorrie

Now that we have our quorum, and because the 2nd of jan. is so far off, we are going to make this folder a "Read Only" for a while. We will start posting here again a few days before the discussion begins, sometime toward the end of Dec. I just don't want for our participants to get all talked out before we even begin. I will remind you all several days ahead of time. Bless you all for announcing your intentions! See you soon!

Lorrie

This forum is now open for comments. Have you all decided yet on how you would like to have this book scheduled? Chapter by chapter? Or the whole thing at once? Or shall we read it together? Let's have your opinion on this!

Lorrie

Lorrie my book has yet to arrive although ordered back in Oct ..they tell me it is back ordered. So I can only make comment of comments..which wont do I think..I am just crossing my fingers that it will arrive soon so I can be ready for the discussion...anna with crossed fingers

Anna fair: Don't fret, dear heart, we won't be starting this until the 2nd of January, (to keep all the New Year's Eve revelers awake) and you will get your book by then, I'm sure. You can read it right along with the rest of us, if that's the way we go. I'm sure you'll hear soon.

Lorrie

I had my doubts before reading this novel that I would be able to get thru it without a great deal of "renewed pain and agony." I don't know how this author did it but she takes the onus off of the horror of this crime and places it on the "healing" of the pain. I liked this story and will be here on the 2nd.

Oh, good, Andy!! I am so pleased with the response we are getting from the people who want to discuss this book. Of course, it will all be a huge success due to the efforts of your highly intelligent host, (moi) who makes every discussion she leads an infinite source of erudition and thought-provoking commentary. Hahahahaha! How do you like them apples?

Lorrie

Seriously, though, Andy, I know what you mean. One of the things I've noticed so far is that, rather than treating this subject in a mawkish and sentimental way, the author writes it with quiet comprehension and compassion. I haven't finished reading it, but I can definitely understand why the reviews have been so great.

With you thoughtful perspectives, how could we miss?

I'd like to join this book discussion, if I can get a book. I'm all confused, I was thinking that Julius Caesar, who I also want to do, was on the 3rd. of January, and this one was the 1st. of February. Australian misunderstanding, we start with the day.

Jan

HI, JAN! WELCOME, WELCOME!

I can see how the way we do dates would confuse someone. Never mind, we will be reading as we go along, so there will be hardly a problem if you are a little late coming in. Book or not, we urge you to post, even lurk if you must.

It's so nice to know that our book discussions are reaching out to so many very nice people in Australia!!

Lorrie

I loved The Lovely Bones. I'll be with you, mostly lurking, but I wouldn't miss this discussion.

ANOTHER ONE! WELCOME, GAIL!

I'm so pleased with the people reporting in. We will have a fine discussion.

Lorrie

Lorie It was such a beautiful day today that I got out and bought The Lovely Bones today amd am starting the third chapter. I am not much of a poster but intend to come in with at least a post or two hopefully.

Ginger

Lorrie, you far outnumber us so it's more likely that your way of writing is the one that will become the norm. I won't have any trouble with the book as there is a copy at my local Library. Also Julius Caesar, I don't suppose there's much call for him. I remember an awful lot of falling on swords! Remember that send up play with the lines "I said don't go July baby. I said don't go!", or something to that effect, my son did it in High School!LOL

Jan

Oh this is great Lorrie. We have Jan, our new Australian reader to join us and Gail is back. Darling Ginger has hopped in also. Come one, come all. this is going to be a wonderful discussion.

HAIL, HAIL, THE GANG'S ALL HERE! Yes, Andy, this is great. And Ginger, you just go ahead and post whenever you want, we will be so glad to see your name there.

I hope everybody will not be too tired out from the Holiday stress, and suffering a let-down from celebrating the arrival of a New Year!

Lorrie

I am not sure what chapter I am in but I understand why my book was long in coming. My youngest read it and I have encouraged her to join us in Jan. The only thing I wish to make a comment about is The Lovely Bones is the most original book I have read in a very long time.

In spite of the reviews I expected something different. And delighted it was as good as the reviews. I will gladly wait until we start our discussion but oh my if the ending is as good a what I have read this is one remarkable achievement for any writer and for the second book of a new writer WOW.........anna

Anna, I am half way thru The Lovely Bones and it getting very interesting to me. I am reading ahead due to another Book discusion and want to post in both so and that does not happen to me often to have two books I like at the same time.

Ginger

Anna, and Ginger: Wonderful!

I am so glad the book is living up to your expectations. I know I can trust you both not to give anything away of the story before we get started. It's heartening that you can find time to read during this season which is so hectic for some. Did I mention that i am glad of the names we have seen so far? Well, I am.

Lorrie

Lorrie, My lips are sealed Very Tightly.

No problem I have used SUPER GLUE On my lips LOL anna

Oh, My! You must be sure to leave a hole large enough to eat with. Hahahaha

Seriously, though, next week I will be putting up a few questions about the book. They are not mandatory to answer, it's merely a tool to help guide the conversation, so remember it's not written in stone that you must answer each one. I think it's easier to have a more relaxed discussion, don't you? And just go with the flow of the comments?

Lorrie

Anna, LOL.

Lorrie,

I know I am going to like the easy flow here. Thanks

The book just sounds yummy. I think I'm going to start early, too, since I'll be away till the 4th. I'm just not sure I would read it while I'm away (distractions, dontcha know) I'm so glad to get the good reports from Ginger and Annafair!

Oh, good, Susan, we will all be glad to see your thoughts on the book. I can see how everybody is really busy now with all the Holiday preparations, that's why I'm glad we have a Jan. 2 opening date. Hopefully most of us will have settled down by then, and Susan will be back in the circle.

Lorrie

Here are some E-Cards that Senior Net has for us to use.

Senior Net E-cards for Your Enjoyment

Here is My Favorite Christmas Card.

Ginger's Card For Each and Everone who posts here and those that Obsever also

Love, Ginger

I finished the book and am ready for the discussion..a reviewer wrote it was a haunting book...and that is why I ask CAN you ever be finished ......some books read YEARS ago still haunt me and I think this is one will too..anna

Of course one can, Anna. Although I have not finished the book yet, I am sure others may have, and the only thing we ask is that all the posters adhere to the tentative schedule I have posted in the heading. Also, on Thursday, January 2, when we begin, there are some optional questions posted above to help us get started.

I am so pleased that we have this wonderful group ready to go! Next Thursday, leave your hangovers on the shelf and jump right in!

Before I forget-----Happy, Happy Holidays to you all!

Lorrie

All right, everyone! It is now New Year's Day, and we will commence our discussion tomorrow. I would ask you to look over the potential questions above. One of them intrigued me. In Susie's own personal version of the hereafter, there is no mention of God or a higher being presiding there. Why is that, do you suppose?

Lorrie

I've just finished the book. I wish I hadn't read ahead, but I just couldn't help myself! I will be pleased to join Lorrie and company in the discussion, and will not violate the schedule. See you soon!

Funny when I was reading the book it just seemed natural for Heaven to be the way it was. In the Bible we read that Jesus will prepare a place for us. I guess in my mind Susie was in her place, the place she needed. I was mesmerized by this book and read it to the end but will take time before I post again to re-read the first chapters. anna

Hello all,

I just finished reading this book and there were times I felt that I was not breathing. It has a tremendous impact.

I won't be able to join often in this discussion as we are up to our ears in packing boxes, etc.

Carol

I think the author wanted Heaven to remain flexible, personal, non-denominational, and allow the individual to feel included no matter what conceptions of an afterlife he or she may have. If she had included God, what form would he (she) take? Whose idea of that being would she use? She suggests a personal place, reflecting the values and ideas of beauty and perfection the deceased brings with her. Susie loved those ornate lamp posts, flower petals, music. Things change later.

Jo, WELCOME, WELCOME!

I would go along with your interpretation of Susie's Heaven. Apparently she sees all the things she loved while alive, and as Anna says, her Heaven is a wonderfully serene place.

I noticed that many of you have finished the book entirely. That is fine, I just happened to read the first few chapters, but apparently many of you found it hard to put down once started. This is so typical of a really good book, don't you think?

Carol, post whenever you can pull yourself away from all those boxes. We'll be here!

Lorrie

At first, some of us probably had misgivings about the content of the story here. After all, the book starts off with an unimaginable horror, and the description, even though muted, ("I was the mortar, he was the pestle") seems dreadfully tragic.

And yet then Susie herself narrates the story, from her perch in a personalized version of heaven; it looks like the high school she used to dream of attending, and all the textbooks are fashion magazines. She has a friendly roommate, an "intake counselor" (a former social worker whose reward is to finally be appreciated for it), lots of dogs to play with and a gazebo from which she can watch her family, friends and murderer go on with their lives.

I found Susie's descriptions of her Heaven to be very illuminating, and beautifully written. I especially liked the thoughts she expressed on page 14 and 15. What she called her Evensong.

Lorrie

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

Susie's heaven is not the one pictured in the Bible. Yet Susie's heaven is the one she needs because, above all, it gives her access to her former life and her family. That 's an important aspect of Susie's afterlife because she isn't ready to part with her family or her earthly life yet.

Perhaps a religious person might say that while God doesn't appear, He is in evidence. After all, look how well this heaven dovetails with everyone's individual needs. One of the book reviews in the heading of our discussion notes that Susie is in a transitional heaven. I wonder what her next level will be like? How will her "real" heaven be in time? I suspect it will continue to be compatible with all of her inner yearnings as she changes? As Jo pointed out, somehow, this afterlife has been arranged to flexibly engage each occupant in a tender and poignant way.

Susie rooms with her Asian friend, Holly. I enjoy the idea that two girls who are possibly from two different religions and cultures wind up in the same Afterlife. In the end, all that matters is that they have many of the same desires and understand each other.

Harriet

Greetings Harriet and Lorrie: I quite agree with your thoughts on Susie's transistional heaven. She's not yet ready to leave her parents and sibs behind nor is she ready to move into an "real" heaven. After all, shouldn't we be able to opt for our own afterworld? I'd chose a land of enchantment and harmony. I'd kinda like to spend a blissful eternity in a kingdom of abundance. Huh, Franny , the 40ish social worker told them all that had to do was desire something and it will come. Susie , ever the adolescent says she finds it strange that she desires to know more than what she'd known on earth. ahahah, typical!
Our Susie was only 14, so--- clubs, girlfriends and fashion would be right at the top of her wish list, wouldn't it? I'm sure Holly fulfills the comraderie that Susie had & will miss with her sister . She tells us about her comfortable bucket seats & her "walking the path" to find what she wants. I loved Susie saying "there wasn't a lot of bull--- in her heaven". Will she be able to change the lives of those she loved so on earth, she muses.
I think what makes this book easy to read is the fact we are experiencing a childs (adolescents) take on this. As parents and adults we understand this profound, heart-wrenching story that occurs much too often & the pain that follows such tragedy. Susie kind of skips through this matter of factly and the author throws a bit of humor (Susie's thinking) on the scene. (pg.

Question #3 keeps eating at me. I believe that rape is a form of conspiracy- a treacherous, terrible scheme against another. Such a helatious act ambushes an unsuspecting one into a trap! Everyone of our survivors experience this quagmire . Susie was trapped into the earth; trapped feeling the mortar and pestle, she leaves her body, trapped there for the assault. Her bones remain behind, trapping her parents into a life of torture as they continue a long search for their beloved child. Trapped, holding and needing one another, borrowing from one another's strength, "their bones aching with exhaustion, they drifted off and woke guiltily at the same time. ." That trap remains a terrible device that throws its net around each character, pulling them down, down...

To answer the question regarding Susie's heaven, I would say that she describes it so because first of all she is not a conventional religious person; rather, she is a spiritual person. She is creative and doesn't cotton to other peoples' versions of heaven. At least three times in the first few pages she speaks of "my heaven". Second, she can't let go of her family and friends because she was killed before she has a chance to resolve issues concerning them. The rape and murder itself needs to be justified by the living on earth and she needs to know that.

My idea of heaven is not anything like Susie's and probably accounts for not liking the story at all. I believe in heaven; but, it is not a place and it is not personal. Heaven is a state of being; a state of perfection. Therefore there is no ego or earthly-type of identification.

Harriet:

Yes, I liked the idea of Susie having a friend, (Holly) up there in her heaven. It makes it seem less lonely for her, somehow.

Andy:

What a vivid take on word-play there. Yes, Susie was definitely TRAPPED in so many ways. I had been looking for a connection between the story and the title that Alice Sebold gave it. I think you showed that in your post.

Showdog:

You said: Second, she can't let go of her family and friends because she was killed before she has a chance to resolve issues concerning them. The rape and murder itself needs to be justified by the living on earth and she needs to know that.

Forgive me, but I don't quite understand what you meant by "the rape and murder itself needs to be justified by the living on earth and she needs to know that"..................can you explain, please?

Lorrie

Gee all of you are right on top of Lovely Bones.

Thanks I am reading your Great posts and have Nothing to add at this time as I am just reporing in Again.

That's okay, Ginger. It's always nice to see your name in any discussion.

Lorrie

Lorrie

Thank You as that does make me feel better.

Ruth kept me goig when I wavered on finishing this book. I was reeling after the early violence to Susie, and didn't know if I could keep going, until Sebold describes Ruth. She lets us see her as a noncnformist teen, a dreamer, a sensitive presence. I think she was chosen on purpose to be that emotional conduit for Susie. In fact, I think the "supporting cast" is one of the most engaging things about this book: father Jack, sister Lindsey, brother Buckley, even mother Abigal, whom I didn't like very much for a while. I loved Grandma Lyn! And the friends, especially Ruth and Ray, and Ray's mother. This description of Ruth kept me going: "Ruth was the girl who got chosen next to last in gym. She was the girl who, when a volleyball sailed in her direction, cowered where she stood while the ball hit the gymnasium floor beside her, and her teammates and the gym teacher tried hard not to groan." Tha and her poetry writing made me hold on when I had considered giving up.

I bought this book and read it through without stopping, because I was so caught up in it. I thought discussing it would be easy, but it's not, for me at least, because so much of it's appeal is to the senses, if that makes sense!

Susie's Heaven is intriguing, the absence of a Supreme Being and Heavenly underlings goes against all we think of as constituting Heaven. Perhaps this matter of factedness(Susie has an Intake Counsellor) is used as a counterbalance to the horror of what's taken place. Also lines like "The end came anyway." and "I thought of my mother." are so horrible because of their plainness.

I just wrote "counsellor", checked the spelling in the book, one "l". Looked at it with one "l", didn't look right. Looked up my Dictionary and saw the spelling "counsellor".(Australian/English Dictionary) This Globalization is making me dizzy!

What does Skunk smell like? Susie says her Heaven often smelt of Skunk. "It was a smell that I had always loved on earth." I thought Skunk was horribly repulsive?

Jan

JAN: I loved the idea, too, of an intake counselor! It lends a softness to this cruel crime. We know that Susie is being advised and mentored now in her heaven. She's being parented, so to speak.

JO: Aren't the supporting characters grand but I can just feel the emotional fractures of these individuals. Susie's mother, bracing herself against more horror falls deeper and deeper into her trap and becomes more unrecognizable as bits and pieces of Susie are discovered; her notebook, her hat. "She was a wall." I can NOT imagine the panic she must endure, daily, as an investigation continues. Len Fenerman became the closest link to Susie, didn't he?

The father distances himself and they come and go in opposite directions. The picture, drawn by Buckley of a thick blue lline seperating the air and the ground remains on the refrigerator- the inbetween, where heaven meets Earth. Lindsey is trapped in school where she practices the art of looking through people instead of at them. Poor little Ray Singh's becomes socially trapped in prejudice because he has dark skin and passed little Susie an adolescent love note. Susie remains trapped between the living and the dead.

Hello, dear Ginger. Did you like this book?

This book is so different from what I expected. And it is so good. I bought it yesterday because the library copy is booked for months. When I first heard about it, I didn't want to read it -- have never enjoyed books about "afterlife." Then, over the holidays, everyone I spoke with who had read it, raved about it. Then, because I hadn't been paying careful attention, I thought SeniorNet had read it in December, and the discussion was over. Then, on New Year's Day I found out I was wrong. So please forgive this late intrusion. I'm rushing to catch up, and have found your posts to be so helpful -- will be watching for traps, Alf. And thinking about personal heavens -- the best of earth, intensified. Like the high school she wanted to attend. Where one could just hang out on a swing with a back to it.

Books become so much more when they're discussed with friends on SeniorNet. I'm committed to dabble in Drabble, and am now looking forward to being in a bit of heaven, too.

Hi Ginger !

Hi there Pedin and Alf and All. Yes I did like the Lovely Bones very much and You are All doing such a Great job covering it. I am enjoying and relating your post and the Book and my thoughts on it are much the same.

Ginger

Jan: When we lived in the country, I learned to avoid the smell of skunk whenever possible, and it was always a major disaster when our dogs would corner one. I always felt the smell was repulsive, that's why the reference in Susie's heaven perplexed me.

Jo: Didn't you just love Granma Lyn? I did. And when you talked about Ruth as conduit, it seemed to answer the question asked about that. There is something so practical, in a way, about Ruth.

Alf: I noticed the reference to a "thin blue line" also. I think it's meaningful, don't you?

Hi, pedln:

So glad you can join us, I hope you're enjoying th book as much as we are. I have developed a strong attachment to this plucky little girl. She is very endearing, in her 14-year-old way.

Lorrie

Thanks, Lorrie - I will keep checking in here.

Susie's heaven seems to be what the author might be wishing for children. It would have just enough comfort and specialties to keep a young person calm and interested. This heaven sounds like it may have been conjured up in a dream. Carol

Although I found the subject matter very disturbing I did enjoy The Lovely Bones.It was so well written. My impression was the place where Susie was wasn't heaven but the place between earth and heaven where she stayed so she could watch over her family and friends until her killer was caught.

Mrs. B:

You mean a sort of Purgatory?

Lorrie

I've been rereading some of the chapters here, and on Pages 41-45 where Susie remembers her 11th birthday and the gift of a camera and what she does with it, we read about how Lindsey creeps into Susie's bedroom one night and finds the picture that Susie had taken. This whole scene, and the lyrical description Sebold gives it I find unutterably sad.

There are subjects in the book that would be deemed off-limits here for some people, but the magical way that the author has woven her words around this difficult subject is just that----magic!

Is there any particular spot in these first six chapters that struck you more than others?

Lorrie

No not Purgatory I don't believe she would warrant any time in Purgatory.

I lean towards the last Poster in that Susie's Heaven doesn't seem a very satisfactory place to me. Susie seems lonely and restless. Perhaps the whole Heaven concept has to build up as you realize what really makes you happy. For instance, I think if you asked a lot of people what would be "heaven on earth", we'd say no cooking, endless chocolate, fancy meals, travel to luxury places etc, etc. But in time, I don't think this would satisfy us at all.

Of course Susie is still drawn to her family and their unhappiness. There is such a lot of pressure on Lindsey as the surviving sister. The headmaster adds to it with his comment about being the only Salmon girl now.

I think the dogs in Susie's heaven are so important. Dog's have no expectations, no agendas. Unconditional affection. I was also struck by Susie's total lack of feeling, or indifference to her own body. It doesn't seem to bring out any feeling in her.

Jan

Great, Jan. You are seeing things there that I never would have thought about, good for you.

And you say that Susie, in her Heaven, seems "restless" to you? I tend to agree, it seems to me that our Susie is not a very happy person in what is supposedly the happiest place there is to be! I know she worries about her family, but she seems so sad, somehow!

Lorrie

This was such an unusual book ....and everyone makes valid suggestions...it is so well written that we find ourselves torn between the terrible thing that happened to Susie and the authors ability to set us apart and make it seem as if she were telling a true story...I keep trying to think of a book written in the same way that affected me as much...anna

Yes, Lorrie, what about the day Susie revealed herself to her poor "broken" father who smashed up the bottles with the ships in them. Susie revealed herself to him! Has anyone ever had that experience?

Well I dont know but after my husband died he came to me sometimes in dreams but twice I was awake and HE WAS THERE...so I dont know ..and sometimes I feel he is in the house...how can I explain that ? it is just a fleeting second but I know he is there...In all of my dreams and even when he is present ...his face is always in the shadow. Once he was sitting at the end of my bed in a chair that isnt there and he was holding his head in his hand particially covering his face..but I asked him a question and he answered ..I had no sense it was a dream I was awake and he was there and as soon as he answered he was gone and the sun was shining, the room bright and I would swear it was not a dream ..but who knows ? so Susie's appearing doesnt seem odd to me or unbilieveable...are you sure you want to room with me at the next book festival ? anna

ALF, I've never had that experience, but when Lorrie asked if any scene was particularly striking, the whole preceding description of the ship-in-bottle fascination shared by father and daughter occured to me. Their mutual interest, unshared by others in the family, made the scene of his grief and his destruction of all that beautiful work powerful.
Susie's heaven is compelling to me because I think death with an awareness of what has been left behind, unresolved, uncompleted life and family issues, would make the weaning process painful. If we remember, if we see the suffering of others, how can we turn our attention to a new and beautiful life? This author suggests a heaven or pre-heaven that is a transitional state, a place of waiting, watching, hoping for resolution and comfort for those still struggling in their mortal state. I think I feel what that would be like. Also, she is so young! She was looking forward to all the experiences ahead of her. How could she not be wistful about those things?

Oh things like that do not frighten me Anna, so much as they intrigue me. I've had these experiences also and I think that if we were each to delve into such things, without fear, there are many who would admit to same.

Jo- I agree that this pre-heaven is transitional (remember like the drawing on the refridgerator.) Everyone is stuck in their own private hell but Susie who continues on seeking to "figure it all out."

Don't you agree that the author does a wonderful job in her description of this psychopath, Mr. Harvey? The man is truly deranged and certifiably unhinged. He didn't remember taking the silver charm bracelet off Susie's wrist but he liked the Penn. keystone, which her dad had had engraved for her, her favorite the tiny bike and he pulled it off and placed it in his pocket before he threw the rest of the bracelet, with charms into the soon to be man made lake.

I am not registered for this discussion,so really have no right to comment.I just wondered does one have to enjoy the book to post,because having started, though I feel compelled to keep reading, I am not enjoying.Like one of the previous posters, whose name escapes me, feel leaving this book behind will be difficult.Is that a "good" thing, does this mean the book really is a good read.

On a purely practical note how long do discussions last for,(am going on holidays soon)and does one need to fulfill any other criteria other than reading the book.

May I comment on the obvious skills of the posters here, you are a pleasure to read.

Lastly, and I hope not the least thing, I am an Australian.

You are very welcome to post... and there is no registering necessary.

Sometimes I'm unable to get the book being discussed, but like to join the discussion anyway.

Lorrie will be along soon to give you a proper welcome.

ANNOFAVONLEA! WELCOME, WELCOME TO OUR DISCUSSION!

Please, do register, and continue to keep coming in to our comments here. Do I understand that you are now reading the book, although reluctantly, or did I misunderstand? If so, please hang in there, no matter how this book makes you feel at first, you cannot be but thrilled at the lyrical writing of the author, and Yes, it is a good read!

We generally take about a month for most book discussions, as you can see from our schedule, but that isn't written in stone. If interest begins to lag, or posters have said all they can, we have been known to close the discussion early. So I do hope you are not going on holiday until February! Our heartiest welcome to our new friend from Down Under!

Lorrie

This will be my first experience at this but can't wait to vsiit about this book. I did not like the book when I began reading it and now feel I could reread it with a different perspective. Love responding to questions so hear goes: I think author avoided specific "Higher Power" idea as to not narrow the readership to only those who beleived. DO you think Susie intentionally touched Ruth? Maybe Ruth just took the time to "get in touch"..... A friend of mine recently told me she thought the book was mainly about how each family member handled the tradegy, not on the heaven scene (I was not comfortable with the heaven scene). sometime will ask Anna questions.

KATHY ANDERS:

WELCOME, WELCOME! I always felt that Susie's brief touching of Ruth was accidental, something happening on Susie's way up to whaere she was going, but I could be wrong.

I think each of us has our own little sense of what Heaven should be like, and we don't like it when another's vision of the same place doesn't agree with ours.

You go right ahead and ask anyone any questions you wish pertaining to the book! We encourage our posters to converse with each other via posts whenever we are in discussion----I believe it creates a less formal atmosphere.

One of my problems with reading ahead on books is that I miss so much. Here, for instance, I'm trying to remember just when it was that Susie's father became aware that his neighbor Mr. Harvey knew much more than he was saying. Just when did Susie's father become suspicious? Was it when Mr. Harvey was making that enigmatic tent out of sheets and things?

Lorrie

Lorrie: We have been blessed with two new readers, Kathy and AnneofAvonlea who both feel comfortable enough to not only ask questions but to answer them as well. You are both so brave. I remember when I first came in here, I felt reluctant to even speak for fear I would upset someone, say the wrong thing or have someone disagree with me. Everyone was so gracious and informative it took no time at all for me to find my niche. Anne, I personally feel that if someone dislikes the book that we are discussing I learn more. They have different perspectives and opinions that they bring to the forefront. Many times they will pick up on something that would have otherwise gone right over my head. There is no one "good" or "bad" feeling in our discussions. I'm interested though, why do you not like the book? Is it the subject matter, the preeternal heaven or the horror of the crime that makes you dislike the read? share that with us, if you would please.

Kathy, like you, I love responding to the questions that our DLs submit for our thoughtful consideration. Many times one participant will go off (usually me) on some tangent answering questions and someone else will come in and totally bend the thought. We love it. We are all adults, here with one common purpose - our love of the written word and the desire to discuss a particular book with other readers.

We truly welcome you.

It is wonderful to be so welcomed.

My dislike is entirely because of the crime, I cannot deal with the horror, not sure whether that is a female thing, but it is very invasive, and all consuming.

The style is wonderful, well considered, and really brings one in.The question is do I want to go that close, and having started do I have a choice any more.Wow Alf I need to consider more my reasons, you do not let the new kid off lightly.

For me, heaven is within us, so have no problem with what I see so far of Suzies Heaven.That mine would be different bothers me not at all.

Practically, I am going away till Jan 20th,as from Thursday, and will persevere and make and read more comment on my return.

I think my idea of the book's "heaven" and Susie's place in this heaven is one where she is perfectly OK with what and whatever she finds. I stumble around with the words "content" and "peace" as representing the condition she reflects. If there is happiness to look toward, there is also on the other end of the spectrum "unhappiness" -- and I feel that Susie is not in the middle of those places. To me she seems to perfectly content with "is" -- an admirable condition I wish I could get to here on earth! I was totally taken with this idea of heaven being a place where no shoulds, woulds, coulds are -- maybe just a "yes" resounding in one's soul. I find Susie in a most wonderful place.

It is always good to hear from new people, as Alf says it gives us a new perspective. Your concern about the crime, which is described enough that the horror of what happened to Susie makes you want to run away from the story. As a mother and grandmother there is part of me that wants to deny this could ever happen,but the news tells us it happens all too often. I think one reason I was willing to read the book because I wanted to see how the story of so heinous a crime could be told.

It is the author's talent that does it and she doesnt run away from the pain this causes for Susie or for her family and friends. She has not made it acceptable but really does us a favor. She makes us see the horror, makes us feel it and thus makes us understand it. I hate to read about this type of crime it is so wrenching but she caught me and took me along with her story. While her story is fiction it makes me understand in a way the reality of crime. There are only a few books over the years that I remember how I felt when I read them and this is going to be one.

anna

Lorrie:

I found it difficult to explain what I meant about Susie not letting go of her family until she is satisfied that her rape and murder is vindicated or at the least she needs to know her family is doing everything possible to bring the murderer to trial; justice must be served.

I found it difficult because I didn't know how to respond without revealing more of the story than I would want to. Also my thinking is in terms of the author's autobiography "Lucky". A book I found to be excellent and did not put down until finished. By reading "Lucky", "Lovely Bones" made sense to me in a way that it didn't before. But, I must say that comments after I posted pretty much caught the flavor of what I meant when I said that Susie has a hard time letting go of her family and just letting them be.

All posts, as so many have already said, are welcomed. Many times I have asked myself "Why bother"? because what I have understood from what I have read is ruined for me by others not coming to the same conclusion. However, as someone pointed out to me, we are all coming from a different place. Therefore, what we get out of reading is bound to be different. A simple enought statement but one I find helpful and keep in mind. After all, I am too young to be stuck in my own opinion.

Hi, all! I’m back, but I picked up something intestinal that has laid me low, so my energy is flagging. Thank goodness I had Lovely Bones to read on the long (and delayed) flights back, though I felt like a dork reading and bawling like a baby. I tried to remember which scene did that to me; I think it was the father’s looking at and then smashing the boats. "Susie, my baby, my little sailor girl" just tore me up.

Another poignant sentence was the one about the bunnies "unwittingly" bringing poison home to their dens. "Then inside the earth and so far away from the man or woman who had laced a garden with toxic bait, an entire family of rabbits would curl into themselves and die," not unlike Susie’s family trapped (as Alf would say) in their home with the toxic knowledge of Susie’s murder, and echoing Susie’s ordeal, her heart "skipping like a rabbit."

Favorite images: the street lamps as "giant heavy berries full of light," the spider webs holding "small jewels of dew."

So, I’ll try to get caught up with the discussion with heaven.

Lorrie: I found Susie's descriptions of her Heaven to be very illuminating, and beautifully written. I especially liked the thoughts she expressed on page 14 and 15. What she called her Evensong. It was on 34/35 of my book, but me too. I loved the packs of dogs running and running and then gathering to howl at Holly’s music. And then Mrs. Utemeyer’s jig. One wonders why Mrs. Utemeyer’s heaven was the same as Susie’s and the other younger people. What was she like besides her violin?

I also liked the concept of Susie’s heaven evolving and changing as she wished for things (only if she knew why she was wishing for them)—her gazebo, and the duplex, for example. Plus the intake counselor because both she and Holly subconsciously wanted their mothers.

I even like the idea of an interim heaven to wean one from earth. Jo expressed it beautifully in post #68. I do think Susie knows it’s not permanent.

Jan: What does Skunk smell like? Susie says her Heaven often smelt of Skunk. "It was a smell that I had always loved on earth." I thought Skunk was horribly repulsive? Skunk is horribly repulsive; it smells like burning rubber. I was pretty well taken aback by this statement, too.

Jan: Perhaps this matter of factedness is used as a counterbalance to the horror of what's taken place. Yes, just think how really gruesome it is. Susie says, for example, "I was in heaven by that time, fitting my limbs together…." The fact that Susie herself seems so removed from the crime as she tells about it makes it a little easier to read about.

Ruth is one of my favorite characters, and even though Susie says it is a total accident that Ruth is the last person she touches as she leaves ("wrong number, accidental call"), it is obvious that Ruth is a perfect conduit for her. I agree with Jo—any girl that bad at PE is my kind of girl. (Aren’t we all glad Clarissa wasn’t there!)

Question: What could be the loss Susie sees in her mother’s eyes that morning of the photo?

Lorrie, it was when he helped build the tent that Jack first suspected Mr. Harvey. Why didn’t anyone check the guy’s background? Was he married to Leah? To Sophie? Did he murder them? When Jack wrote down those names, Susie said he began to make a list of the dead.

MME: Welcome home. I hope you're feeling up to par in no time. You always have the BEST way of picking up on things. The questions that you posed such as: "didn't they check his background" are what makes this a B novel in my eyes and not an A+. There are far too many of those questions that weren't touched upon by AS. I guess she felt that the essence of the story was Susie and her family more than the crime and the solving of it itself.

Gail:

You said,

"I was totally taken with this idea of heaven being a place where no shoulds, woulds, coulds are -- maybe just a "yes" resounding in one's soul. I find Susie in a most wonderful place." I couldn't agree more.

Annafair:

I think you said it succinctly when you stated that it was the writing that kept the book from becoming too sensational. I agree, even though it's a repugnant subject, Alice Sebold's writing seems to keep it low-key enough so that we are not completely turned away.

Showdog:

That was an intriguing post. First of all, thank you for restraining your thoughts in order not to acclerate the rate of our reading, I realize how hard that is when you have read the whole book.

Yes, after reading some of the reviews, I wonder if perhaps we should have featured "Lucky" rather than this "Lovely Bones," but no, I don't think so. "Lucky" did get some marvelous critiques, though.And thank you for reminding us that yes, we do all come from different planes.

Your ending statement, "After all, I am too young to be stuck in my own opinion." amused me greatly, but I wonder how some of our more elderly posters will refrain from chasing you with their upraised canes! LOL

SUSAN!!! WELCOME BACK!!! I do hope your are feeling better now, and it’s wonderful to see you posting again.

After rereading the scene where Susie’s father and mr. Harvey are putting up the tent, (thank you for finding that page for me) Susie is trying desperately to communicate with her father: (page 36, hardcover): I focused very hard on the dead geranium in his line of vision. I thought if I could make it bloom he would have his answer.. In my heaven it bloomed. In my heav en geranium petals swirled in eddies up to my waist. On Earth nothing happened.

But through the snow I noticed this: my father was looking toward the greenhouse in a new way. He had begun to wonder.

I think this is where Susie’s father first begins to suspect this man. All through this first section I keep wanting to butt in and tell them where to look, and drop some clues. Yes, Alf, the detective work on this case really stinks!

Lorrie

Mr. Harvey gives me the cold shivers! More so because he's not violent, well that sounds stupid because you can't get any more violent than killing and dismembering someone, but he approaches Susie's death like a gourmet dinner at a fine Restaurant. I just shuddered thinking about it!

He says "my delicious death moan" and that "each kill was a gift to himself." It sounds like someone treating themselves to a night out with all the trimmings. Another chilling thing was that he saved his book of sonnets and his knife out of the sack with Susie's body in it. Horror and culture side by side. I remember that some of Hitler's men would go home from their horrible Death Camps and listen to fine music and play with their children! I don't know enough about the human mind to understand that.

Susie seems to have to face her demons head on, at the sinkhole, she says, "Mr. Harvey smiled, and as I watched his smile break across his face, I would not look away." I wonder if she feels she can somehow deal with this man by facing him down, confronting him head on?

Susie's father feels the guilt of losing his daughter "the hand of God pressing down on him, sayiny you were not there when your daughter needed you." Why doesn't Susie ever mention a higher power? This absence seems to be emphasized by the fact that Christmas was ignored in her heaven, I wonder why?

I'd love to know what others think!

Jan

Jan, early on Jo said: "I think the author wanted Heaven to remain flexible, personal, non-denominational, and allow the individual to feel included no matter what conceptions of an afterlife he or she may have." I think that idea of including the reader, no matter what his or her personal beliefs, may have played a part in AS’s creation of Susie’s heaven.

Also, my first thought was that a child’s heaven would not include any authority figures. And since this is a transitional heaven, perhaps God is reserved for the real thing.

I too was surprised that Christmas was not part of that heaven, since that is a traditional favorite celebration for kids, but perhaps it was too hard for children to revisit that occasion without their families.

Lorrie, I don't understand the schedule. Why so long till we get to the next part? Shouldn't it be Jan 2-9-16-23?

Susan:

No, the schedule was posted as I wanted it to be. I had this stupid theory that it would be nice to begin each new segment on a Sunday--sort of like a new week, for example. It was a dumb idea, and I have now changed the dates up above, as you can see. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. So we can now close up these first six chapters tomorrow and jump right into Chapter 7 and beyond on Thursday. I want to thank you all for your restraint. Hahaha

Dim-Wit Lorrie

YAY, Lorrie! I'm dying to continue....

Susie does thank God, chapter 1 page 16 my version.

Have to admit Susies heaven seems way more like a place of transition than Heaven to me, certainly in me fullfills a desire I always have to watch things from a distance, so as to really understand.Like the kind of thing one feels in a near death experience.

Jan Cold shivers describes exactly how I feel about this book, I am persevering but the experience is painful in the extreme.Susie would not look away, and neither do I, But gosh I would want to.

I notice that so many of you have different opinions of how the author has described Susie’s heaven, and I wondered how Alice Sebold herself felt about this subject. I looked into one of her many interviews:

As to her own beliefs about life after death, Sebold simply says she isn't sure. "I would like to believe that we live in a world where our daily drudgery isn't the only thing going on," she says. "It's nice to imagine that there's a connection to the dead somehow. I don't know how that would happen, or what it would look like. But it's nice to believe it's possible.”

As for myself, since reading the book, I can’t stop thinking of the old familiar child-like prayer, “If I Should Die Before I Wake, “ and I know I will forever connect that with the story of Susie Salmon.

Lorrie

annofavonlea:

Which edition of the book are you reading? In my hard-cover version, page 16 is the first page of Chapter 2, which begins "When I first entered Heaven I thought".................Are we reading different versions? I certainly hope the chapters are all the same, at least!

Lorrie

Lorrie, my paperback in Australia, is the same as your Hard cover. I was wondering too, where Anne is quoting from.

In that paragraph before the book proper starts(I forget the proper name for it) her father says about the penguin in the snow globe "Don't worry, Susie: he has a nice life. He's trapped in a perfect world."

Maybe the trapped is a clue to Susie's feelings about her Heaven?

Jan

Sorry, lorre its page 11, just got my notes confused. Mine is a hardback, released through book club. Chapter 2 starts on 16, so we probably are the same.

Anne, sorry but I can't find your reference. On Page 11 she's accepting a coke from Mr. Harvey.

What do other people think about her mother? She despises the word Momma, is this because of Susie, or didn't she want children. She has sad eyes.

Jan

Top of page 11: "I still thank God for a small detective named Len Fenerman."

In case none of you noticed the slight change in schedule (due to hawk-eyed Susan) tomorrow we will be going on with Chapter 7, through Chapter 13. I can see there are some really juicy bits in these pages, and I am anxious to hear all your thoughts.

Before we move on, I wanted to quote from one of the book's reviews, for those who might have had second thoughts on reading the synopsis:

"Readers encountering a plot summary of The Lovely Bones might be tempted to turn away before giving it a chance, figuring that newspapers offer enough tragedy these days; do we really have time and energy for dark, tragic fiction? Consider those apprehensions dismissed: The Lovely Bones is an unflinching, graceful gift of a novel, an invigorating, expansive work of storytelling that should not work, but simply does. "An audacious novel about death and connections," Conan Putnam marveled in the Chicago Tribune, "The Lovely Bones shows us there are more important things in life than retribution. Like forgiveness, like love." .....................from an interview with David Welch, at powells.com

For those of you who are continuing on with this discussion, and for those of you also who are simply lurking, there are some optional questions in the heading above to assist your thoughts. Feel free to use them or not at your own discretion.

Lorrie

I’m going to comment on #5 based on Part I because I was really taken by Jack’s taking advantage of the Monopoly game to explain Susie’s death to Buckley. It was obviously spur-of-the-moment, but so often when we have something difficult to tell someone, something that has been on our minds, that we have maybe even practiced out loud, it is a miraculous inspiration that allows us to do it in a way we never expected. Then Buckley keeps the shoe on his dresser until one day it disappears (is that after Susie moves on?).

The pieces that each takes as his/her own are interesting, too. Jack, the car or the wheelbarrow; Lindsey the iron; Buckley the dog; and Abigail the cannon (!).

I don't think Buckley really sees Susie, but the little fairy tale of her presence, her kiss, is the comfort provided by the child's psyche. His capacity for this fantasy is more important than anything anyone in the family could say to him. As a matter of fact, they don't on the whole seem to offer one another much comfort. It's as if they are so damaged individually by the horror of Susie's death that they are unable to relate to one another, admit the horror of their individual and mutual loss, and deal with it in a straightforward manner. The wires are down, the ability to find a sane approach to this insane loss has isolated them from one another. At this point Buckley's childishness is his best protection. He seems like the healthiest one of the lot!

Before we go on, I wanted to comment on one section where the author very cleverly inserted a "story within a story." Remember how she told of poor Mrs. Untemeyer whom Susie used to notice wandering aimlessly around the neighborhood, and sometimes standing for hours on their front lawn gazing off into space, looking for her missing daughter Natalie?

Well, when Susie was up in her heaven, she happened to see an elderly lady walking with a young girl, and when she asked, was told that was Mrs. Untemeyer and her daughter, Natalie. Nice touch, there.

And on Page 112, the thoughts Ray Singh had as he thought about the murdered Susie were incredibly lovely: "He came to realize something as he stared at my photo---that it was not me. I was in the air around him. I sat with him in the cold mornings he had now with Ruth. I was in the quieat time he spent alone betweem studying. I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow, to set me free. He didn't want to burn my photo or toss it away, but he didn't want to look at me anymore, either. I watched as he placed the photograph in one of the giant volumes of Indian poetry in which he and his mother had pressed dozens of fragile flowers that were slowly turning to dust."

I really like the way this woman writes!

Lorrie

Susan, the idea of using the Monopoly game as an instrument to try to explain to Buckley what had happened to his sister was a great one. I didn't pay too much attention to any significance of the pieces that each person chose until you mentioned it. Interesting.

Jo, do you think Buckley was simply convincing himself that he saw Susie? Somehow I was hoping that of all of her family, at least she could show herself to her brother. There is something very likeable about this young man.

Lorrie

All of the comments are so good there is nothing I could add so I just read and think about how much this story affected me, How much I admire the author who carefully built a story, I dont want to imagine how I would feel under the same circumstance but I think she has caught the pain of what has happened.

Just as an aside ...when my husband died I found I could no longer go by the name he called me. It was the name I gave myself when I was about 11 and read Anne of Green Gables. I decided I preferred Anne to Anna my given name and I was always his Anne. This is not strange but every time I write that or think that my breath stops and my chest hurts. I had to be someone else to survive and so I asked family and friends to call me Anna. When someone accidently calls me Anne it is almost like they hit me. SO I understand how everyone had to become someone else. You have a need to make new memories or the old ones will destroy you. This story hit me that way. anna

Oh, Anna, how very heartbreaking!

You wrote: "I had to be someone else to survive and so I asked family and friends to call me Anna." I think that says it all, and it's a reaction other people can relate to.

Your post really affected me, but I won't go int the reasons for it just yet. It's good to hear from you.

Lorrie

I came to discuss a book, and things I had long forgotten are tugging away.If only a name change could make someone another person. Anna fair like Susie in here you are made of strong stuff, and in spite of that pain how grateful you must be to have loved well.

My real name is Judith, my sadness which I also can not discuss here happened to Judy, and in spite of a wonderful life hence, I can never go back to the before Judith.I have little contact with people from my youth who cant make the transition from Judy to Judith.Anna could change my tag if the anneofavonlea is a worry to you. Judith

Thought I would have been able to get into this discussion by the second. I have the book on order at the library and was amazed at how many people ahead of me through the System. Just can't wait to get started on it. Hope to do that before the discussion ends.

JeanneP

Annof avonlea: Do not fret, we don't care what your name was, is or should be, you are amongst friends and well intentioned folks here. If you wish to open your heart and soul, you are free to do so in our group. If you choose not to speak of the horrors of the past, that is perfectly acceptable also. We are essentially a family of perceptive and accepting people. We all have our histories and our fractured pasts, some pleasant and others not so satisfactory. BUT, here it does not matter. I hope that your being amoungst our participants and the discussions that you will begin to heal.

I think many times when we read a novel and start to share our thoughts, our record of experiences rise to the cognitive point where it is extremly painful. You try to grasp a thought and your mind shifts back to a recollection that is so appalling and agonizing that it catches your breath. We become disquieted, irritable and saddened as we dredge up the very things that we've worked so hard to keep repressed for a long period of time. We all have our own anesthetic of choice, don't we? We all need our pain alleviated as we advance toward comprehension and forgiveness.

Jeanne P:

Don't fret if you haven't gotten your book yet. This is paced slow, and it won't be hard for you to catch up when you do get it. It's just great to see you here at all!

Judith, AnnaFair, and Alf:

It's odd how certain books can trigger personal responses in the reader, isn't it? Alf, your post above is truly thoughtful--I couldn't agree more.

Lorrie

I've been reading an interview from Borders that Alice Sebold gave. In one part, when asked about writing about Susie's version of heaven, she says:

What was it like writing about Susie's heaven?

AS: Fun and hideous! Fun because the territory is wide open. Hideous because the territory is wide open. I explored many versions and ideas for heaven in the novel. My closest friends are under strict orders never to repeat some of my early ideas to me. They are absolutely hilarious in their utter wrongness, even if I may have felt them quite passionately at the time. Writing about heaven was sort of like diving off a high platform over and over again and not caring if you did a belly-flop 800 times because you are so determined to nail it, eventually—black-and-blue belly or no.

I loved thinking about Susie's afterlife. I'm all for realism in fiction, but why not break those bounds? Do real people imagine an afterlife for those they have lost? You bet. That's all I'm doing. To me, our versions of heaven—all our versions—are as real as anything here on earth because they inform how we live and breathe every day. So writing about heaven was incredibly fun, ultimately."

Borders Interview with Alice Sebold

I am really confused as to the relationship between the murderer Mr. Harvey and what Susie sees about his own family. In the scene in the car that the author describes on page 97 (hardcover) (Chapter

. Harvey's father apparently forces his mother out of the car, leaving the son clutching a strange necklace of hers, "a large oval piece of amber framed by silver, inside of which sat a whole and perfect fly."

This whole chapter confuses me. Does anyone make any sense out of this?

Lorrie

You are all so perceptive and that is the gift we get when we not only read a book but share. Alf is right in here we can be honest in ways that the world denies us. And the wonder of it all we are among the best of friends who care about us, unseen and unknown except through our mutual love of the written word.

Anneofavonlea. Please do not change your name. It does no pain me to remember how much I enjoyed reading about Anne...Hearing others called Anne does not give me pain ..it is hearing others calling me the same that does. It is a lovely name and I wore it proudly for fifty years ,you enjoy it for whatever reason you have. And you dont need to tell us why.

Having met some of the discussion leaders in person I can tell you they are special people. We have all shared here and while I digress I would like to explain why we can when sometimes we cant with close friends or even family.

When a friend is sharing a thought we are thinking how we will respond instead of truly listening. A good friend who was a physcologist ( that is most likely mispelled but you know what I mean) told me that years ago. It is one reason why couples fight because they are not listening they are thinking what thier rebuttal will be. HERE we READ and UNDERSTAND in ways we dont when we are just listening.

Now that I have said that I again want to say this book was a revelation and I think Ms Sebold is a fantastic writer. Susie's heaven is the right heaven for her. And if we can understand those who write about friends or family who have been murdered there seems they feel a need of the lost one to find the murderer. They too must be waiting in thier own heaven.

I shared my feelings because the family seems to be lost in this story and I could understand why ...anna

Lorrie, that section about Mr. Harvey's early years confused me too. He has lost his mother. Is he trying to punish her for leaving when he kills? He has kept a little charm of Susie's. I think that must be tied into the piece of his mother's necklace that he has. Is Susie trying to show us when the evil began to start in Mr. Harvey?

Jo, I agree that Buckley is the healthiest one in the family, so far. Jack's use of the Monopoly game to explain Susie's death was beautiful. But Buckley is a perceptive child and is learning fast. The section where Lindsey says they should go upstairs and he can sleep in her bed is heart-rendering. He knows when someone treats you special they are going to explain something horrible to you.

I am worried about this family because the adults are falling apart. Lindsey is strong, but is being almost forced to be the adult. That's too much pressure.

Samuel's brother Hal is an enigma to me. He seems exceptionally mature, but maybe he's older than I thought -- 18?

Your posts have been wonderful and I've been wanting to join you more, but have been online very little this week.

Ah, pedln:

No matter. Whenever you do post, it's welcome.

Yes, I have felt that thesse children all seem very very mature for their actual years. I realize that tragedy ages people quickly, but to me the author is attributing too much to the thinking processes of 13 and 14 year old children? Perhaps this will all make more sense as we go on.

Lorrie

Alf, I so agree about our record of experiences affecting how we read a novel. I am reading this one so viscerally (as opposed to intellectually) that it’s difficult to discuss it other than simply comment on things that particularly moved me.

The name thing really struck home, too. The only journal entry I made last year (not a lot of introspection going on) was about ‘what’s in a name.’ Cohorts and friends call me Sue (one friend insists on calling me Susan, so I am Susan to her, though it seems rather formal to me), but my dad, late husband and stepkids called me Susie (but I adopted the one, so he now calls me Mom). I recently reconnected with the other son’s (long estranged) ex-wife and she calls me Susie. It is rather comforting, like somehow that loving, and loved, person named Susie hasn’t entirely disappeared.

Like many mass murders, George Harvey has kept tokens of his victims (even the heel of the little girl he did nothing to). Perhaps the fly in amber was really his first token, of the mother who left him. He seems to have still dreams of castles and faraway places until his perverted needs begin to torment him and then he has his "not still" dreams of girls and women. Once his needs are sated, his castle dreams return.

I am not sure what goes wrong but I have been ready to post several times and I get a page that cant be requested..It seems I need to watch whether or not I am on line or not. Have no idea why...

Was going to post about Mr Harvey...I think the author put that in to show us something about him. Whether he felt the loss of him mother and then became fixated on girls and women..Who knows? His father was apparantly a controller and perhaps the child needed his mother to help him become normal.

The perfect fly caught in the amber (in case no one knows amber is the sap of pine trees lain for millions of years beneath decayed and dead forests, the most valuable holds whole ancient insects..mine only have bits of wings and other debris) anyway perhaps in looking at this last gift from his mother the boy might have fanticized about keeping someone captive. Who knows?

I think the author wanted to give us some insight to his life as a child...anna

Buckley is handling it best, simply because of his age. "The shadow of years was not as big on his small body." When my husband died, everyone told me how well my 8 year old son was handling it, as he and his father were inseparable. Years later, he told me that although he DID understand death, in his heart he believed his father was coming back.

Just harking back to Susie's heaven one more time. Where are the signs that this is a teenagers heaven? Violins and jigs?

Jan

Last night I fell asleep trying to type a response. When my eyes popped open and my head jerked up, I read what I had typed and it sounded as if I were responding to totally different questions from outer space...! I guess I am trying to answer voices out in space!
I had to erase my "post," anyway!
I think if Buckley had really seen Susie, we would have had some indication from her that she had broken the barrier between her and her brother. Doesn't she say that her father sees her in broken bits of glass after he smashes up his ships-in-bottles? She indicates that, for a flash of time, she has manifested herself to him, but she never says that about Buckley.
The eighth chapter is puzzling, but it is evident that Harvey was damaged by the experiences in his childhood, especially the ones concerning his mother. The buildings and castles versus the fly in amber may represent a conflict between two elements in his nature: the creative and the violent. I always think of a fly in amber as representing some kind of paralysis or inablility to act. He was unable to mature in a natural way after living with his parents' maladjustment and conflict. He lost his mother, probably to his father's violence. Maybe he is reenacting that loss and attempting to find a substitue for her presence in his life every time he assaults some young female. The description of her running from his father makes her seem fragile, unable to escape his malevolence: "She had run without stopping, her white body thin and fragile and disappearing...." while young Harvey sat "like a stone" holding that necklace with the fly in amber. (97)

These responses have been terrific!! Isn’t it interesting how books can affect the readers in such different ways?
Not only that but you are all doing what every discussion leader hopes you would do-------you are talking to each other!

Pedln:

I got that with little Buckley, too. He has perceived that whenever anyone offers him some kind of treat or solace, there is usually a price to pay. You worry about this family. I do, too.

Susan:

May we call you Susan? It’s not too formal with you? I have always loved that name.

What tales we all have to tell! There’s a story there somewhere about your reconnection with a long-estranged ex-daughter-in-law.. AnnaFair tells us about her own experiences with seeing her deceased husband, and Alf shares with us her deepest emotions about how she perceives the characters in this book. Your explanation of why George Harvey keeps all his mementoes seems right, somehow..

Jo:

No, I guess Buckley didn’t really see his sister Susie, but it would have been really nice if he had, wouldn’t it? I like that little boy.

I think I would buy your explanation that this murderer is unable to mature in a natural way, that he is reenacting the loss, probably to violence from her husband, of his mother. And yes, the description of her running through the fields from his father seems to make her appear fragile, and somehow weak.

Jan:

You ask, Where are the signs that this is a teenager’s heaven?

No, not just violins and jugs. Susie herself tells us “There were no teachers in the school. We never had to go inside, except for Art class for me and Jazz for my roommate. Our textbooks were Seventeeen and Glamour and Vogue. Our heaven had an ice cream shop where, when you asked for peppermint stick ice cream no one ever said, “It’s seasonal.” It had a newspaper where our pictures appeared a lot and made us look important.” What's not to like, for a teenager?

By the way, the one sad thing about Susie's heaven is that she will never be allowed to have the thing she wants most: "to be allowed to grou up." But that will never be.

Lorrie

A funny aside: at my son's over Thanksgiving we had peppermint ice cream and my DIL said, "It's seasonal," showing me the carton. I had never heard of such a thing! But the seasonal ice cream never made it to Las Vegas. Too bad—I was quite taken with it.

Hi, everyone. I FOUND my copy of the book which I read several months ago. So now I can join in and participate.

I think one of my favorite parts of this book is the voice of young Susie who narrates from the beyond. It is just right for me and skillfully done. Susie may be somewhat precocious, but it makes perfect sense to me that she would hang around close to her family for a while until her murderer is caught. There's an old saying that "Murder will out," and it looks like Susie is in for the long haul. Those "lovely bones" still have to be discovered.

I think of her heaven as a kind of outskirts of heaven. My daughter would call it the "green room," her name for a place in the afterlife where people sometimes wait until problems in their family are resolved to their satisfaction or until a beloved other joins them. After the situation is resolved or they are joined by the person, they can move on into "Heaven Proper."

I'll confine my comments to Chapter 8 since that is where we seem to be. Susie is able to see all the way back into Mr. Harvey's childhood, see his mother run off "her body thin and fragile and disappearing, while her son clung on to the amber necklace she had torn from her neck to hand him."

I like the idea that this amber necklace is Mr. Harvey's first token. I'm not sure that his murderous career can be explained by any one event--or even series of events--but the childhood incident does show us that even sociopaths have childhoods. Also he seems to NEED to kill. After he murders Susie, he has peaceful dreams of buildings for three months.

Then his bad dreams, the "not still" dreams, the ones of women and children, return. His crime somehow gives him peace for those three months and then its effects wear off and we can assume that he will once again need to find a victim. Sick as it is, this seems to be his pattern. But then we knew from the very beginning that he was not a well man.

I'll stop there.

Maryal

Welcome home Maryal. I agree with your rendition of Chapter 8. I think that Mr. Harvey's childhood memory is thrown in there to give us a heads up or a "reason" for such sociopathic behavior of this criminal's mind. We read about such a horror and we all ask "what the hell makes people do things like that?" The antisocial mind is a complex study and it would take more than one chapter in this book to explain such deranged thoughts. It is quite Freudian in nature isn't it and it is not really explained well enough, for me, to understand such a depraved and perverted man.

I loved being introduced to Grandma Lynn and can relate to her. "She was, in all her obnoxious finery, dragging the light back in."

Don't you love Grandma Lynn? She is sure no-nonsense (we're going to have a talk, girl!), and she too senses the evil emanating from Mr. Harvey's house.

What a horrible scene the night Jack goes out with the baseball bat. Whose flashlight did Jack see from the window? Did you all get the impression that Mr. Harvey had designs on Clarissa? Susie said, "Brian's light hit his back as he (Brian/Harvey?) crawled into the high stalks and listened, again for the sound of whimpering." (It would have been great if Brian had come across Mr. Harvey after Clarissa instead of Jack.) Whose flashlight did Jack see from the window? This section was confusing to me.

MARYAL, MARYAL, WELCOME!!

I'm so glad you finally got your book, and you seem to be caught right up in our story---good for you!

You talked about Susie's heaven,and I think also that the book contains a heavy dose of spiritualism---messages from the dead, ghostly visitations, and bodily possessions. Nobody seems to find solace in anything like prayer or a sacred text, and as pleasant as he heaven seems to her, there's no God there. I wonder if this bothers any of you.

Alf: I think I knew you would love Grandma Lynn! She's your kind of woman, forthright, cheerful, compassionate and understanding. I think the rest of the family fall under her spell, too.

Susan:

That episode was truly frightening. Yes, i think Harvey was planning to attack Clarissa. Why else was he lurking there? On page 119 Susie is telling us about that night:

"Brian ran when he heard my name-----full speed ahead awake.His light hopped over the cornfield, and for one bright second, there was Mr. Harvey. No one but me saw him." this man is one of the most chillingly sinister characters I have read in ages.

Lorrie

Lorrie: Well bless your heart, thank you for that vote of confidence. What I liked the best was the way she put LIFE back into the family --- particularly poor little Lindsey as Grandma applied the rogue.

Lorrie~~Yes, there is no real mention of God and it's my guess that that is deliberate. After all, any God portrayed here would fail to meet expectations of many and it's an almost impossible task to portray God. It doesn't bother me at all that Heaven doesn't seem to have any of the elements some people might expect: pearly gates, streets paved with gold, lots of angels and clouds, etc.

I love Grandma Lynn and the life she brings to the house. Lyndsey badly needs to be "special," and not because her sister was murdered but on her own hook. She is beginning to mature and she even has a boyfriend. Good point about the rouge, ALF. It does help Lyndsey to feel taken care of and more mature, ghastly though the application may be.

A major focus of this book seems to be the effect on the surviving family when a member is murdered. They all have to find a way to carry on their lives, but at the moment the adults are overcome with grief and the children need their Grandma.

Maryal: Yes, the omission of a deity in the book was probably planned that way, although I feel that there is a strong feeling of spiritualism in the story.

All through this book, I am particularly fascinated by the interminable grief of Susie's father,and, although tenderly drawn, I must confess that at times I thought of an uncaring and sneaky sentiment, like "C'mon, snap out of it!"

I think what is tragic here is how this family collapses into private grief then falls apart from one another, the father obsessed with solving the crime, the mother drifting off into her own adulterous fantasies, Leslie considering herself as "the Walking Dead," and Buckley clinging to his father.

It fills me with rage that they must suffer so, and the horrible George Harvey seems to get away with it! I feel so frustrated as I read along, that nobody seems to do anything to stop this guy!!

Lorrie

Lorrie~~Right you are--there is much grief. I've heard that there is no loss worse than the loss of a child. I have not lost a child (God forbid), but I believe it to be true since I have lost all sorts of other people.

As for the family falling into their own private grief, I think this is in fact what happens when a child is lost. Somewhere I read that about 50 percent or higher of marriages fail after the loss of a child. People grieve so differently: Susie's father has camped out on the chair in his office and is determined to track down her killer. Susie's mother attempts to feel alive again by entering into an affair with Len. Lindsey attempts to distance herself from being the sister of that murdered girl by, for example, drawing a fish on her Camp nametag instead of writing Salmon which the others would recognize.

This book reminds me of the recent trial of David Westerphal for the murder of Danielle VanDam, a California 7 year old. That family has stayed together so far, and they have two other children, a younger son and an older one. They have had the trial to focus on, but Westerphal was recently sentenced to death and I wonder what will become of them now.

What do the rest of you think? Is the grief too extended?

Maryal

I think Alice Sebold is showing us there is no way to compare how one person grieves over another and there is no perfect way to grieve.

Years ago a young,very handsome officer in our squadron was burned in a plane crash. Not only was his body burned but his face was nearly destroyed. His wife, who had been his childhood sweetheart was also a very lovely looking lady. She moved to the burn center in Texas and was there all through the whole ordeal. But in the end he divorced her to marry the nurse that had also been there. Why ? Because in her eyes he saw the person he used to be and would never be again. The nurse had never known him anyway but disfigured...It was so devastating to his wife. She still loved him, not just the handsome man she had married but the disfigured man he was. But to get on with his life he had to leave all that had been behind ...he just couldnt live with the wife that remembered what he had looked like. TO say it was unfair...is right and yet it was the only way he could handle it. anna

Anna, what a tragic story!! It sounds almost like one of our book discussions, doesn't it? Lots of subject matter there for a book.

Lorrie

Maryal, I have heard the same statistics about the families that dissolve after a tragedy like this. I have two friends who lost children (one of them 2 children) about 20 years ago. They are both strong women. The husband of one of them left about a year after the accident, and they were divorced. The other has a remarkable marriage partnership. Several months after 9/11 I received a note from an extended family member who lost one of her three children in the WTC. Her comment still haunts me -- " I want to keep my family intact."

The grief of those left behind is certainly the focus of this book, and I'm sure that all of us are thinking of those real families who have been left behind.

In ordinary times, I would never dream of broaching this subject, because I have tried so hard for so long to put it all behind me, but upon reading this haunting book, and reading some of these truly heartfelt posts, I somehow feel compelled to speak from the point of view of someone who has really “been there”, so to speak.

My only two children, a boy six, and a little girl, four, were killed when I was still a young mother out in California,, almost 57 years ago, and I have never forgotten a single detail of that day. Only a short time before I had asked their father to take them to the store with him, “to get them out of my hair” for a bit. It was the last time I ever saw them alive. Yes, it was an automobile accident, and yes, my husband escaped unscathed.

I remember at the time someone remarked, “we should not be burying our children.” and that has always stuck with me. The death of a son or a daughter seems so unnatural, somehow.

Grief strikes people in different ways, as I can tell you from personal experience. I know that at the time I cursed God for taking my children and letting me live, and it was a long time before I stopped blaming myself. Yes, my husband and I divorced, there was nothing left of our marriage once the mourning set in, and that mourning has never subsided, even though it is faint, at times. I feel it every time I see someone’s grandchild ( I often thought I would have made a great grandma!) Every Christmas, and every birthday these children had. So there is no way you can put a time on how long people will grieve. Compared to what I felt when my children died, the loss of my second husband, a good man, five years ago seemed much more subdued. But he had lived his life, and was expected to die soon. There’s a vast difference.

I didn’t mean to lay all this out here, but these past few days memories have come rushing back to me. When I first read the synopsis of this book I hesitated about leading the discussion but decided it might be a good thing, in a way, which it is.

I know you would have been a great grandmother...because you are a wonderful person. I hope someday to meet you but if I never do in person..you have touched all of us in many ways. You are so good at what you do here and I hope it helps just a little to share your sorrow.

My oldest is 50 and the youngest 35 and not a day goes by I thank God for them ...and worry when they are traveling or doing anything. I try not to burden them with my concern....but I know you never stop being a mom. Your loss never diminished your love for them or your being a mom. I can hope I never know what you have had to live through but I can say ..your sharing helps.

God bless you ...and the book does help...since it tells us there is no right or wrong way to grieve..and we can forgive ourselves for the way we have handled our personal grief. Love and hugs...anna

But don't we get the feeling that it is Susie herself who is clinging, directing her father's attention toward thoughts of the murder, and if she could let go, maybe he could, too.

Thank you, Lorrie, for telling us. I know you didn't intend it this way, but your experience shows that resilience and strength in the face of tragedy are within us. It was good of you to remind us! I agree that nothing that shakes us to the core ever goes away, and one of the things that I find believable about this book is the continuing grief.
MmeW, I know Susie is trying to communicate with her father, to guide him to knowledge of her killer, but I think he would keep on grieving even if she were not there. But then, the author presumes we know that it's impossible for her NOT to be there!

Dear, dear Lorrie, somehow I missed your post and thanks to Jo went back to find it. What a heart-wrenching revelation—how difficult it must be for you to lead this discussion. I hope it is a good thing for you. And, Jo, you are right, of course. "Susie, my baby, my little sailor girl."

It makes one pause when you consider how much heartache and sorrow are a part of all of our lives . Early on , rearing children as a single mother, a warm family adopted me into their fold and became my best friends. My best friends lost their 16 yr. old son ( my God son) in an automobile accident in 1984. Michael was in "who's who" teen of America and was being endorsed by Ben Gillman for West Point. His early death naturally devestated ALL of us and I tried for years to get this grieving family to accept therapy. There were 5 children that became disembowled practically and still remain in anguish and melancholy. I see the affect that this catastrophe handed them. The parents are still together, thank the Lord, but have never recovered from this loss. In 1999 they lost yet another son to AIDS. HOW in the world can anyone survive thi? It truly nauseates me when I think of those brilliant, resourceful, quick witted boys and what a loss not only to us but to society this collision with "fate" offered them. I have seen far too much pain as a nurse over the past 5 decades and accept my flippant, cheeky attitude in life as a balancing act.

Lorrie, we know how difficult this is for you and want you to consider our arms embracing you.

This is the strangest thing---I sit here today, wrapped in the heartfelt thoughts of all you wonderful posters, shedding the expected tears, and wondering at the magic of how I can feel so grateful to so many people who would ordinarily be called "strangers" to me, but to whom I could never use that term. I can't tell you how thankful I am for your wonderful posts---the sincerity shines through.

As I said before, I had hesitated about leading this particular discussion, but now I am glad I accepted. There is something cathartic about airing all these thoughts, and believe me when I say I am getting more out of this exchange of comments than I ever did after years of therapy, and what seemed endless stays at sanitariums.

You will never know how much affection I feel for you all right now. Thank you all, so much!

Lorrie

And now, like any good discussion Leader should suggest, shall we get back on track with our book? Although, in some respects, our personal bouts with grief over the loss of a loved one seems very much to the point at this particular stage, don't you agree?

We haven't said much about that stalwart, independent little character, the "not-so-standard-issue teenage girl." Ruth. I liked her, did you, too?

On Thursday we will be moving on to Chapter 14 and beyond, and I will have a few more optional questions up in the heading.

Lorrie `

My goodness, dear Lorrie, of course you still remember. Who could ever forget? I am so very sorry for your loss. Your story reminds me of how much I hate the word "closure." It implies that there is some kind of clock running on grief. And there isn't. Time makes loss easier to bear, but the loss, the memories, the what-might-have- beens are always with us.

Most of us do not reach the age of 50 or 60 or 70 without having had losses in this life. But we are all here and YOU are here and that is a very good thing.

I think one of the richnesses of reading as we get older is bringing life experience to what we read. We read on far more levels than the young people I teach. From novels they often gain valuable vicarious experiences which may help them later in their lives. From novels, we gain these experiences as well as a kind of verification that we are not alone. You, dear Lorrie, are not alone.

And now, back to the book.

Mme. W said that she thought it was not just Susie that was holding on, that family members were as well. And I agree. Susie cannot move on to the next level (whatever that may be) until she can let go of this world and her loved ones.

In heaven, Susie has just wondered when she might get to see her grandfather, her favoite grandparent:

"You can have that," Franny said to me. "Plenty of people do."
"How do you make the switch?" I asked.
"It's not as easy as you might think," she said. "You have to stop desiring certain answers."
"I don't get it."
"If you stop asking why you were killed instead of someone else, stop investigating the vacuum left by your loss, stop wondering what everyone left on Earth is feeling," she said, "you can be free. Simply put, you have to give up on Earth."
This seemed impossible to me." (120 in the hardcover edition)

Maryal

Bless you, and thank you for sharing with us. Yes, you would have makde a wonderful grandma because you are brave and admirable. Many of us would not have had your courage to lead a discussion like this, let alone be so honest.

This book really shows how a marriage can bumble along with no great ups and downs till something jolts it out of its complacency and then all the cracks show up. Did Susie's mother ever want children? If she didn't then Susie's death would be worse for her than for the others in some ways.

Lindsey badly needs a friend who won't see her as a replacement for Susie. She is always trying to escape. Escape from people's pity, their expectations, and their intense curiousity, "for a second Ruth could feel the feeling a little more vividly--what it was like to claim me. How people looked at Lindsey and imagined a girl covered in blood." Her first experience of sex was part of an escape bid.

Lorrie, I remember once listening to a very old lady being interviewed at the end of her life. She had lost a son in a war, perhaps the First, and the interviewer said in an offhand tone, "Do you ever think of him?" I still remember she replied "Every day of my life. Every day of my life I miss him."

Jan

Maryal: I have always detested that word, "closure."

Jan:

Those words of that elderly lady, how true, how true!

pedln: I thank you so much.

I have been reading an interesting interview with our author, Alice Sebold, and this is what she has to say about people:

"I'm fascinated by what we hide from others when we are our public selves and how in different groupings different layers of ourselves are revealed. It sounds silly, but the human animal is fascinating, and exploring character fully is one of the most thrilling parts of writing for me."

This is an interesting interview-----

http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=sebold (Interview with Alice Sebold)

Lorrie

Hi Everyone, I am reading Alice Sebold's book and I cannot understand what the title means? Lovely? Hope someone can explain. Lamloft

HI, THERE, LAMLOFT! That is a very good question. Ordinarily, we don't , in the discussion, go beyond the particular chapter we're in right now, and I have a feeling that the answer to your question lies sonewhere ahead in chapters we haven't yet discussed.

However, since so many of you have already finished the book, would anyone care to comment on this? I don't think it would give away too much of what is to come, do you?

Lorrie

Seniornet is an even more wonderful place than I already knew it was! The posts here over the last two days give it another dimension for me. Lorrie, your loss and your grief have given us a rare oportunity for hoesty about human experince and emotion and survival. Bless you and thank you for your story.
I hope it's not saying too much at this point to address the "lovely bones" question: are they lovely because of what Susie was to her family and because of the circuitous paths that bring them together after her death? Even in the section we are supposed to stick to now, Grandma Lynn has new impact upon her daughter and granddaughter that we might explore. Abigail relaxes, gives her mother a chance to comfort her, allows for some smiles and laughter in the house, permits herself to do the unthinkable and leave dishes in the sink until the next morning. A break in the tension!

Right, Jo!

I love the almost seamless way the author takes us through these pages, don't you?

One of the better things, I think, about this novel is the way the story moves along, party because the language is so beautiful and partly due to the narrative style. Our Susie tell a story by mixing in things that happened before she died, so that we can see how the family was when she was still there. At the same time she keeps the day to day, year to year events moving along so we can see the progress the family makes in accepting her death.

Lorrie

Lamloft~~Welcome. Hope you will stick around. This is just a guess on my part. I think the Title, The Lovely Bones, may be an echo of the opening line of one of Theodore Roethke's poems, "I Knew a Woman."

Here are the first four lines of that poem:

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!

It's not unusual for writers to make reference to another piece of writing, especially one they admire, in their titles.

Just a guess.

Maryal

I agree, Lorrie. Until you said that, I don't think I'd given the author full credit for this tapestry: past and present, the former illuuminating the way things are progressing since her death. Most obviously, the Abigail she caught in that photograph -- just Abigail, not wife, not mother, just the wistful, unconnected and unfulfilled person.

Matyal, I'll bet you're right! I had forgotten that poem -- one I've always liked. Do you remember the ancient short poem, anonymous, of necessity, I believe, that ends with "not even the rain has such small hands"? Don't know why I think of that now, unless it's the subtlety of beauty that evokes love suggested in both verses.

Hi all. I just popped into this discussion - there are so many topics being discussed! I'm sure I'll have a lot to say after I've finished reading all your postings.

I think I'm having a strange reaction to the characters in the book; While I have sympathy for their situations, I don't like most of them. I do like Ruth, the Grandmother and Buckley, they seem to have more dimension to them than the other characters.

I despise the murderer, of course, and couldn't understand what the significance of his childhood mini-portrait was. It seems that the peek into his childhood just reconfirmed how inhuman and cold he was.

I very much dislike Abigal, she seems so selfish.

The rest of them leave me pretty neutral, even Susie herself. Maybe I'm being resistant to the book because of its tragic and gruesome subject matter. I seem to be reluctant to let myself become involved with the characters.

I appreciate the book on several levels - but on an emotional level, I'm not sure that I'm glad to have read it. - Judy

I feel a bit like that Judy. I can't see where Abigail has made any attempt to comfort or bond with her two remaining children. She treats her husband with indifference. Especially when he goes to the cornfield to confront the person he sees moving through the darkness. She never offers any word of explanation for her actions. She irritates me so much.

Also doesn't this family have any friends? Surely someone would reach out to them. Abigail doesn't seem to belong in that neighbourhood.

Jan

Maryal:

What a lovely poem! And yes, it does seem so apt, somhow!

Jo: Do you know the rest of that poem--"rain--small hands?" It sounds lovely.

judywolf: (WELCOME, WELCOME!)

Your post was very forthright and I tend to agree on your takd of Abigail. To me she didn't seem at all maternal, or caring of her children, and I was appalled at how, it seemed to me, she especially seemed to ignore her youngest, Buckley. But----and this is one of the good things about these discussions, not everyone will see it that way.

Lorrie

Ah, but I felt empathy for Abigal...to me the point was...the pain was too much...in order to protect ourselves.. sometimes we retreat...we are so scared to deal....we run....and the affair I think, if looked at with perspective and not moral judgement is that it is a physical attempt to (1)blot out the pain, (2) feel something, anything, beside pain...and at the end of the book you will find out more about the memorial in the cornfield....and yes, although mothering is an extremely important part of a female, it is not the only part of a female...sometimes we can't help other, even our own kids, if we can not help ourselves.......gee, sounds like therapy to me.....lol Just finished this book last night and am still pondering many of the insights presented....well written, and there are parts that are so real, i.e. the pain of loss, that I had to put it down every now and then.........

Dear Lorrie,

You are the one with the lovely bones and the heart to go with them.

Always your friend,

Mal

Lorrie, I found it! It's by e.e. cummings.
SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED

Somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
my experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, I and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility; whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Dear Mal:

I do thank you from the bottom of my heart.

...............................................................

Fran:

Yes, i think I was speaking from moral judgement about Abigail, you did make me think again about why she was doing what she did.

Jo:

Thank you so much. Absolutely beautiful! I have printed and saved it, thanks again!

Lorrie

We now have some new optional questions up in the heading. But before we go into that, I wanted to comment on this next chapter, which I found to be absolutely horrifying, in some respects.

Chapter 14 is a particularly tense one, I think. On page 178 (hard copy) Susie tells us how hard she tries to make Lindsy “feel” something: “Despite my inability to appear or whisper, push or usher, Lindsey, all alone felt something.. Something charged the air in the cold dank basement and made her cringe......................”

And then on page 181, one of the most chilling pages of the book, .......”Inside that house my sister was the only living being, but she was not alone, and I was not her only company............”
And Susie goes into that long roll call of murdered victims. “I stood in heaven. I called their names.”

I still feel cold, and not from the temperature, when I read that passage.

Lorrie

Jo~~I'm so glad you found Cummings' poem. I was (w)racking my brain because the rain and the small hands was jingling. But I didn't come up with it.

As for Abigail. I don't think that her move toward Len is at all unexpected. If you look at Susie's memories of bath time and alone time with mother which she always got a little more of because her sister was put to bed first, plus the information that Abigail was not exactly pleased to learn that just as the girls were getting older she was to have another child--Buckley, I'd say that this woman was always a little distant.

The father, on the other hand, spends a lot of time with his children and he is beginning to let Buckley and Lindsey back into his life again. As he recovers from the beating and the surgery, he delights in showing Buckley that he can once again carry him on his shoulders.

Whether or not Abigail's "decision" was moral or not, I cannot say because she doesn't seem to give it thoughtful consideration. I like the idea that she just wants to feel something other than death and grief. Can't remember who made that point and don't have time to scroll up.

There are some passages in both this recent section and also with the new one that I am having trouble understanding. 1) What is the significance to Abigail of Ruana and the cigarettes -- first on p. 172 when she is on the walk with her mother, and then on p. 207 ". . my mother thought of Ruana, smoking. The sweet scent of Dunhills. . . had taken my mother far away." 2)After smoking with Ruana Abigail had a "wonderful dream" where a girl who had been clean and whole was being burned alive. Is this supposed to be Susie, or is it Abigail, who wants to go back to being the girl who worked at Wannamakers?

I don't think I could ever presume to judge Abigail concerning her adultery, or neglecting her family, or even for leaving. But I do find it difficult to excuse her lying to Lindsey when she promised she would never leave. I doubt Lindsey considers the postcards an adequate substitute for her mother's presence.

Some of us have been reading Seven Sisters along with this reading and discussion. Have any of you experienced feelings of deja vu? P. 222 talks about Virginia Woolf and her stones in the pocket. There have been others, but I'd need to go back to find them.

Another strange reading experience for me -- perhaps because I'm doing it sketchily -- is that I'll be reading a passage and think that it is Lindsey talking. This has happened more than once.

The business about Buckley's "heart to stone" and "be careful—it might freeze that way" reminds me of Abigail tooo. I think it was harder for her to grieve because she was so detached. It's like the baby on the shore in California finally got through the layers: "no one, not even a mother who had every nerve attuned to anticipate disaster, could have saved her if the waves leapt up..." (223) So it wasn't until California that she was able to grieve. And I think she had felt all the more guilty about not grieving, seeing her grieving family. And all the more guilty because she was the mother, "attuned to anticipate disaster." (Though it was Susie who saved Buckley when he swallowed the stick.)

But we know it was she who left the daffodils on the cornfield the day of the memorial when she seeks the same flower in a California flower shop.

pedln:

I, too, found this woman (Ray's mother), to be quite enigmatic. I am confused also about the reference to the girl being burned alive. Does this have some connection with the former ritual of "Suttee" I think it's called, in India where the widow was expected to throw herself on her dead husband's pyre? And where do the Dunhill cigarettes come in? Specific mention was made of the brand. "Very interesting", as someone said somewhere.

Lorrie

Maybe you have to be a smoker to appreciate the different smells of cigarettes. I think to Abigail, the Dunhills smelled exotic, evoked another time, another place, just as she associated those black Gauloises with one of her first boyfriends. I thought maybe the pyre scene is a death she would have preferred for Susie, the girl’s body clean and whole.

Before we go on, I wanted to comment on a couple of the postings about whether Buckley really could see Susie or was he was imagining it or wishing it. Susie doesn't seem to be able to willfully "manifest" herself to people when she is present; but if people look for her in the right way, they'll be able to see her. So I think yes, Buckley really could see her. And to me, it seemed Susie was almost surprised to see her own reflections in the shards of ship bottle glass. By the way, did her father see those reflections? I recall thinking that he didn't notice them.

Judywolfs, I, too, think Buckley really saw Susie on p. 245 and wanted to call out her name.

Pedln, I feel inundated with Virginia Woolf. I just finished reading a stunning review of The Hours in the local paper. It seems she is everywhere.

I loaned my book to my sister-in-law, and she was only on about chapter 2 when she said that she was fascinated with the book, almost the way one is fascinated with a car accident. She described it this way, "You're almost afraid to look, and you feel kind of guilty for wanting to look, so you just kind of peek out of the corner of your eyes at the words." Yikes! that's exactly how I felt all though the whole book.

"You're almost afraid to look, and you feel kind of guilty for wanting to look, so you just kind of peek out of the corner of your eyes at the words."

What a colorful way of expessing it, Judy! do you mind if I repeat this quote up in the heading, or rather, do you think your sister-in-law would mind?

I have always thought Buckley did see his sister. It's sort of nice to think that, anyway, isn't it?

Lorie

Sure Lorrie, go right ahead and use her quote. I'll tell her she's getting famous, and maybe she'll join the book discussion! If you want to attribute the quote to somebody, her name is Marilyn. She'll love it! Judy

Well, Hey, where did everyone go? I turn my back for a minute to do some errands, and look what happens!

I just wanted to mention here about how we are keeping vigil with Susie, desperate for the killer to be found and punished, that is the frustrating part, I believe.

Also, a comment on the particularly lovely writing that Ms. Sebold did when whe wrote about Susie's father:

Every day he got up. Before sleep wore off he was who he used to be. Then, as his consciousness woke, it was as if poison seeped in. At first he couldn't even get up. He lay there under a heavy weight. But then only movement could save him, and he moved and he moved, no movement being enough to make up for it. The guilt on him, the hand of God pressing down on him, saying "You were not there when your daughter needed you.

I think, to her credit, this author has envisioned one of the most loving and sympathetic fathers I've read in a long time.

*************************************************************

One of the reviewers writes that this book contains references to "Othello" and to "Our Town." Can you find these references and comment on their significance?

Lorrie

That's not FAIR. I just taught Othello last semester, and whatever the echoes are from that play, I completely missed them. I guess I switch off the scholar when reading for pleasure. Smile.

However, the references, or echoes, of Our Town are everywhere. In that play young Emily (is that her name?) who has died wants to go back and visit her home. She is warned to pick an unimportant day because that will be difficult enough. The voice from beyond this life, looking at this life, is like The Lovely Bones.

Someone else can find the Othello references. I have to go read Exodus.

Maryal

Not only do we have Woolf (stones in pockets) references here AND in 7 Sisters, but they both have references to a "chicken with its head cut off." And when Lorrie asked the question about Othello, I posted the answer (complete with citation from 7 Sisters) in that discussion.

I think my circuits are blown from too much IRS (I'm self-teaching that same course Pedln took) in a hurry to prepare for the software test.

But I haven't found the answer in Lovely Bones (about Othello). I loved Susie and Holiday's reunion.

I may have found it. Susie and Ray discuss Othello in the scaffolding because Susie has been studying it in class.(74) In Ray's love letter, he refers to himself as "The Moor." (26)

Susie also says that on her way back to the duplex she would pass under "the old-time street lamps" that she had once seen in Our Town.

Susan, that's it!! The reference to "the Moor." At the time when I read it, I was curious as to the reference but this seems to be what they meant. The one about the old-time street lamps is a definite go! I must say you are all a great bunch of hawk-eyes here.

Also, as a confirmed dog-lover I, too, was overjoyed at the reunion between Holiday and Susie. At last she has someone from her family to hold!

Lorrie

Mme W~~Ah yes, there it is, the reference to Othello. Thank you so much for finding it. I might have gone asearching myself. Now I don't have to.

Maryal, the funny thing was that I was posting in Seven Sisters and remembered Lorrie's question, but thought it was for SS, so came up with an Othello quote in SS. I think I'm losing it.

And now seniornet doesnt recognize me ..and tells me I have new messages I have already read.. and we had 6 inches of snow and for us very cold weather. 13degrees and a much lower windchill. I have just read the posts I hadnt read and glad someone caught the Moor...I read it through when it first arrived but oh how much more I am getting from reading the opinions of everyone else.. THIS is the best way to read and share a book...IMHO..anna

Fairanna, I am having computer problems also and thought that is was just the webtb but I guess not and then I to thought it may weather problems but I guess not. Wishing You All the Best. Misery loves company. Ginger

Oh, my, AnnaFair and Ginger:

I do hope your computers will magically get "fixed" and you won't have any further frustration in that department.

Maryal:

You mentioned about teaching Othello. How do your students react to this famous story? Do they like it, were bored by it, think it's not "cool?" I'm curious, because when we were first introduced to Shakespeare, that play was the one I loved the most.

Lorrie

In Question 9 up above, we ask,

"the young relationships (Lindsay and Samuel, Ray and Susie, Ray and Ruth) all seem to have depth, maturity, and potential."'
Why do you suppose this is? Could it possibly be the fairly young age of the author, that reflects over into her writing?

Did any of you, as I did, feel that Samuel, for instance, was pictured as a much more mature man than what his actual age was. In the beginning, even, when he was hardly more than 14?

Lorrie

How I enjoyed getting home today and wallowing in the posts. How is it that people reading a book are so drawn to each other.My last post before I went on holidays was so warmly accepted that thanks seems hardly enough.

Alf you are right about the breath catching and pain that comes with memory.My early experiences have somehow finally caught up with me here in this discussion until I can hide no more.

I was concerned about this book untill i read here about Sebolds earlier story Lucky in which she recounts an actual experience of her own.My own story seemed the worse because it was a rape by a trusted family member.I do not need to go into detail, but it is somehow comforting to finally say in a public forum something which has for the most part been completely hidden.

Empathy for Abigail is easy for me, my own Mother was unable to face the pain and died without ever discussing it with me.I always knew of the love and regret she felt though.She also moved away returning only at holidays."my mother was silent.She saw no other option" says susie on page 167. Were we not raised in an era where silence was considered golden.Are you not doing now as the reader marilyn suggests and "reading out of the corner of your eye?"

Lorrie sorry to digress, it has been so cathartic though being here, that I have to thank you. Had I not read of your sadness I should have lacked courage, to post this. Somehow this is a safe place for me and I thank you all Judith

Anne you have found the right think to say ..it is a safe place and because it is faceless it gives us courage to say what we really feel. When I first went on line it was a year after my husbands death and I had so much pain and no one to really tell it to.

Fortunately I met a person on line who had such sage advice and LISTENED to my pain I made it through. I told someone about this and said it was like talking to God and He answered. I met this person later and found the same thing face to face. Wise and funny and now 8 years later we are still friends. And I still get good advice when needed.

There is no judgement here ...we share our pain and hurts and everyone listens with their heart. Reading this book helps to..because the author has carefully and gently led us.

Glad you are Anne ....love, anna

You know, this is the strangest thing. There is something about this book that causes long-held emotions to surface, and then to erupt, in some cases. Perhaps it is the deep emotions that we feel, as readers, as we read about this plucky little girl and her view from her heaven.

Judith, you wrote,:

Were we not raised in an era where silence was considered golden.Are you not doing now as the reader marilyn suggests and "reading out of the corner of your eye?".............(See, Judy, your sister-in-law's quote caught on) and i can't agree more. Some years back, there were certain things that were never discussed, publicly, and rape was one of them. How horrible for you, Judith, not being able to pour it all out to your mother. At least you know she was feeling your pain even though she never spoke of it.

Annafair has said it quite clearly. Yes, you are definitely in a "safe place." You are among people who actually do care!

Lorrie

This is purely an example of what SeniorNet Books & Lit. can do for each of us. This forum is a safe haven and I hope that each of you, by sharing your stories with us, feel that you've retreated into open arms and no longer feel abandoned and alone, in your pain.

Anne~~I'm so glad that you feel you can finally admit the awful thing that happened to you. Healing comes with disclosure. It is so hard to carry something "unspeakable" around.

Yes, those days were different. I remember when silence was "golden," when "children were seen but not heard." It was also a time when retarded children were hidden and cancer was an unspoken word. Obituaries often read "died after a long illness," and the reader was left to guess what that might be.

I am sorry that you suffered from the silence as well as from the attack.

And, yes, Lorrie, I do think that this novel (and others) causes us to remember and reflect on pain. Hugs all around.

Maryal

I feel so sorry for Abigail. Wonder if she isn't typical of a person in that "shock". have heard of using a "gozimer veil" an invisible cover that shields us from all emotion to help us "pull ourselves together" or avoid more hurt. how many times have we been asked (or ask others) "How are you?" and dont' really expect an honest answer. Here they want to get past the pain, others dont' know how to deal with their pain, having not experienced it themselves so they shut out folks, even their friends. Hopefully, we all have a "grandma" in our lives who would come in - at the right time - and get us going in the right direction.

hI, kATHY;

Yes, let's not forget the refreshing image of Grandma Lynn coming in and finally setting the right course for those aimless mourners of Susie's disappearance! She was like a breath of fresh air blowing into that murky house of grief.

Lorrie

Enjoying all the posts, and Lorrie, tht last question is a dilly! It occured to me that young love is charged with optimism about the future, and the belief that the energy and enthusiasm of the present will never wane. Mature people have already suffered disappointments that can drain the energy from anyone, including partners is a commitment intended to last a lifetime. In Abigail's case, she seems to be disappointed and disracted from her family and her environment even before Susie's death. (Someone here asked if she didn't have any neighbors or friends, I believe. Maybe not! Not any compatible ones, anyway!) Susie the narrator makes sure we see this when she describes what she sees in that photograph of her mother: Abigail as Abigail, not Mother, not Wife, her mind and emotions a million miles away.

I heard an expression once that youth was wasted on the young.Is love also?

The love of Susies parents will endure, probably because of the mothers leaving. It is the absence that will remind her what she has.I am so tempted to see if this is true, am hoping so hard that somehow she will return renewed.Of course one can make a case for Abigails choice, her relationship with her own mother was so skewed that a simple walk together was difficult.

Ruth is my favourite character, one small touch and she was forever obsessed with Susie, living in that half life between the spirit and the flesh.I cant help wondering would they have been real friends in another scenario.

Lastly, readers are wonderful people, generous of spirit, caring of each other. Thank you, it is a long time since I have felt so accepted.

I am beginning to think that this has become an unusual book discussion. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have felt a true sense of "belonging," a closeness to my fellow readers, that one doesn't ordinarily find in a general book discussion. Perhaps it is the content--somehow this particular writer has managed to write, and in a spectacular way, about things that appear to touch each of us in a personal way.

I have copied your addresses amd will write to you individually later on, but in the meantime, God Bless You!

*******************************************************************

Anne mentions that she liked Ruth. I did, too, and I also wonder if she and Susie would have been good friends had Susie lived. I am confused about the way Ruth goes continually walking, "counting the living as well as the dead." I'm sorry, but that meaning goes right over my head, although I can appreciate the beautiful writing of Ms. Sebold on page 253, where she writes about the penguin house at the zoo.

Lorrie

The term itself makes it difficult to justify, but Abigals unfaithful and illicit actions were not a direct result of an uncaring, uncompromising husband. I felt this was rather an impaired desire to "get away from it all." She was running away from the family structure and to, toward, or at anything that was in her path of flight. To me, she was a fugitive, looking to dodge and defect.

We all have obscure choices of fleeing as we bury painful thoughts.Adultery is high up on that list of actions. I understand where she was coming from and give allowances for her actions.

I had assumed counting the living and the dead meant that she gave equal importance or attention to both.Think Sebold intends us to know Ruth moved easily from the natural to the spiritual with consumate ease.

Alf, unfaithful seems such a harsh term.......So many of us are not always fully concentrating on our partners. Abigail had turned inward, Susie's death was the catalyst that turned isolation to adultery, is the one more questionable than the other?

This is my first discussion, so can't yet compare, perhaps it will be all down hill from here Lorrie. I tend to think that the quality of the book "binds us"

anneof.. Well adultery is what it is irregardless of the cause. I agree the isolation did turn her toward an adulterous affair. Her husband's mourning led to his silence and the atmosphere became too heavy for her. It's difficult to chase tragedy away--- so why not run away from it?

Anneofavolea, that's a good in-a-nutshell description of Ruth, how she "moved easily from the natural to the spiritual with consumate ease."

Alf, I don't think that unfaithful is a harsh term, and that's not what I hold against Abigail (remember a while back, I admitted I kind of hate her.) What I hold against Abigail is that she is a selfcentered coward. Now THAT'S harsh.

Well Judy, I must be missing something, it is amazing how we each of us see different things in people, I see Ruana as cowardly, staying in a loveless situation, martyring herself for Ray.

Also I feel anything that causes us to continually neglect the needs of our partner is adulterous, Abigail and Jack were apart long before Susie was murdered.

I found the term unfaithful harsh, adultery was Alfs choice. Of course the dictionary explanation of adultery is voluntary illicit sex with an unlawful partner. Unfaithful is an entirely different term.I can see myself forgiving adultery if it were bought on by my unfaithfulness in areas other than sexual ones.Perhaps I am self centred but I hate to be taken for granted by anyone, but especially by those I love.Abigail is from an era where everyone assumed the little woman was happy being wife, mother, carer, cook and cleaner.Susie saw there was more to her which needed nurturing.I dont think Jack did.I dont consider him perfidious, merely ignorant of his wifes need.

anneof avonlea~~ Yes, Abigail is from the era when women were just beginning to understand that they had other options open to them. Susie is killed in December of 1973, so even though we all probably remember that year, we are reading a novel set in the past, nearly 30 years ago.

If I were teaching this novel, my students would think of it as set "way back there." (They don't have a very clear idea of history--I didn't at their age, by the way.) Anyway, 1973 is as far away for students these days as World War II was for students in the 70's.

Which brings me to a point of sorts. I think that Lindsey's loss of her virginity is somewhat premature (she is just 14) for the early 1970s. Yes, those were the days of flower children, free sex, and dope, but most 14 year olds were still not sexually active.

I wonder why Sebold decided to set the novel in the past.

Maryal

Yes, here Maryal has touched on a point that struck me all along in the book. Even setting the scene so many years ago, i still feel that Ms. Sebold had given these characters, Lindsey, Stanley, and yes, even Ray a maturity beyond their actual years. Perhaps my perception of thirteen and fourteen year old children is that of more childish characteristics, but it just doesn't jibe, to me.

I'm sitting here gnashing my teeth in frustration. Have you ever written a nice, wordy long post, and then suddenly with a wrong click of your finger, lost the whole thing? I just finished a lengthy dissertation all about Ruth (she intrigues me) and swiftly lost it. I know, I know, I should be putting them in my word processor first.

Tomorrow is Wednesday, and I will be inserting the final questions in our heading. I feel that most of us have finished the book by now and it will not give away anything if we comment on the remaining chapters.

Lorrie

I think it would be more difficult in the present, to write that is, as modern youth would be way more learned in the relationship area.

Marriage was a more sacred institution, and it occurs (the murder) as Sebold herself says in the opening paragraph in an age where people didnt really believe that such things happened.Sadly they did, and were the more horrific because of their rarity.

So many such events today seem to be as a result of drug or alcohol abuse. Mr harvey strikes me as extremely evil, standing out the more in an age of relative innocence.

I'm off to read the end. Thanks Lorrie. Do try again with the Ruth thing, she is a stand out in my mind.

Help, I think I've missed something about Jack. I didn't realize until P. 238 that the beating from Brian damaged him neurologically - Buckley had sat beside him, prompting him when to smile and react. He often knew when, but his synapses were never as quick now as normal . . . Or is this grief?

Lorrie, I look forward to your comments about Ruth. So many have said how they like her. I feel she is as much a victim of Mr. Harvey as Susie. What kind of life does she have, that revolves around Susie and death. She is living an obsession. Is there purpose in her life?

It's interesting that two peripheral characters, Grandma Lynn and Hal, bring stability to the others. They're not unaffected by the tragic events, but they don't let them dictate or distract them.

About Ruth. She is obsessed, yes, but i found it amusing that whe turns out to be the Heroine of Heaven among all Susie's contemporaries up there in her heaven. They all adore her for her relentless walking around writing down the names of victims. etc. And even though in her former life they had never met, Ruth pays an exquisitely pivotal role in Susie's status.

She is straightforward, open, without artifice or coquetry, and does become a very good friend to Ray. Isn't there one scene towards the end where Ruth does get a glimpse of Susie? Page 295....."As clear as day, she saw me standing there beside her, looking at the spot where Mr. Harvey had dumped me"........

Lorrie

Someone previously posted the question as to the significance of the title of this book, ( I think it was Judy Wolf?). Well, Alice Sebold has written what I think is one of the more beautiful sentiments of this whole experience. I do know this whole page, particularly the parts I have put in italics, left me shattered, because the truth of it is so strong. She writes:

These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections-sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent--that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future, the price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life."

Fabulous!

Lorrie

Lorrie Thank You for your finding why the title was Lovely Bones as I wondered but could not find it and it fits perfectly. I did so enjoy reading Lovely Bones and would not have if You had not selected it and decieded to be the Discussion Leader. I think that instead of reading the whole book at one setting I will just read the chapters as they are listed to discuss as I tend to forget which chapter I read something in but it was So Good that I could not put it down. I thnk that I have lived so long that my brain has a bit of trouble retain some things. Smile.

Ginger

Do you not feel inspired to see this whilst you are here, to know now the connection you have to others.That is exactly why Ruth is so obsessive.She senses how we, in the humdrum of life miss it.

We occasionally are part of events that cause a Shakesperean sea change in our lives.The combination of this book and this particular group of people are I think a powerful force for just that.

When i get to heaven, I think I can now hold the world as well, thankyou all for that.

Judith Ann

Ginger, dear, you put it so eloquently. believe me when i say it has been a pleasure having you in our group here, and I have enjoyed all your earthy posts.

Judith:

You said, "When i get to heaven, I think I can now hold the world as well, thankyou all for that." Remarkable! Those few words express more about the feeling of this book that tons of reviews might. Well said!

********************************************************************

There is something I would like to ask all of you, lurkers, too. If you were asked to put a description of this novel into only one word, what word would it be? For starters, I would say "Haunting." What say you?

Lorrie

That's a difficult question! I might say "unsettling."

Maryal, I like it, I like it! Very good. I confess I had to look it up in my Webster's, but I believe it is a very apt word.

Haunting
transcemdemt

How about all you others? Let's hear from you.

Lorrie

OOPS! Spelling in last post. Here's Judy heard from:

Haunting.............Lorrie
Transcendent.........Maryal
Unsettling...........Judy

-- is the first word that comes to mind.

Took me ages though, I always use way too many words.

I would much prefer saying....... This Hauntingly beautiful story, Transcends time and space,almost Ethereal in content,Unsettling ones mind with its Evocative imagery.

Sorry for taking liberties with your adjectives.Interestingly on checking my Roget's all these words are cross matched, so it seems we have all finished at the same place.This book has to be a classic.

Ginger there was an element of mystery and intrigue.

anneofavonlea Not easy to find one word when I feel the way I do about it as I really enjoyed reading it.

These are fine, everyone. I like your sentence, Judith--it's almost like an exercise from a writing class. Hahaha

Haunting...........................Lorrie
Trandescent........................Maryal
Ethereal...........................Alf
Evocative..........................anneofavonlea
Intriguing.........................Ginger (Nice, Ginger!)

Lorrie

Ginger , however you got it just right I think, the more I ponder the more I feel that intriguing is the most apt one word description.

anneofavonlea, Thanks I am Blushing.

There is one thing we haven't commented on. What were your feelings when you read about Susie taking over Ruth's body so that she could make love to her long-desired boy friend, Ray? Did you feel that this long-desired rite of passage was maybe a bit much?

I have to say that, if this novel stumbles anywhere, I believe it is the weird scene of their sexual fulfillment. When I read that, I felt that it was running embarrasingly close to Patrick Swayze's demise, in "Ghost." Have you seen that movie?

However, I suppose that part will be essential for the time when they make this book into a movie, which i believe they will, judging from its popularity.

Lorrie

This is not about sexual fulfillment, this is about taking back that which was lost, about replacing pain with joy, how could it be "heaven" if she didnt eradicate this horror still somewhere within herself.

"I felt like a sea in which he stood and pissed and shat.....is now changed to...... "inside my head I said the word GENTLE, and then I said the word "MAN'

I thank God for gentle men.

Yes, i suppose you're right, Judith, but I guess I'm embarrassingly obtuse. To me, that particular passage seemed incongruous, however beautifully written it was. In comparison with the rest of the book to me it didn't seem to fit, somehow.

This is one of the beauties of these discussions. Each of us sees moments in some writings in entirely different ways.

Lorrie

Lorrie: If you were asked to put a description of this novel into only one word, what word would it be? I like all the adjectives, but ethereal (Alf’s "etheral") is my favorite, not only because it is the word I would use—the novel is almost gossamer, but also my late husband and I had a big joke about "eth-er-al," (I think because he mispronounced it in a seminar)—there are those connections again.

Did you feel that this long-desired rite of passage was maybe a bit much? (Susie’s taking over Ruth’s body) I really did. Perhaps I am too much of a mystery reader—the main point should be justice. And I can’t help wondering what Ruth would wonder for the rest of her life—was he sleeping with her or with Susie? AND, as long as she was there (in Ruth’s body), I wanted her to tell Ray that her body was in the safe in the sinkhole. What relief that would given to her family to have found her! I wanted the loose ends tied.

However, I can understand Anneofavonlea: this is about taking back that which was lost, about replacing pain with joy. When Lindsey and Sam first "did it," Susie’s thought was "at fourteen my sister sailed away from me into a place I’d never been. In the walls of my sex there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers there were windows." (125) So maybe it was heavenly healing; I must believe that hormones were not a part of it.

Something that bothered me was the Abigail’s episode in the mall with Len (195): "…she saw my father, in his paper gown and black socks, perched on the edge of the examining table as the doctor had explained to them the dangers of congestive heart failure." That seems to be a real failure in research, since heart failure has nothing to do with heart attacks. Frankly, the dangers of heart failure are that someday you will not be able to get enough oxygen to your body, and you will die. It has nothing to do with heart attacks.

Disconcerting is so good, well done Dianne.

Lorre, obtuse, I dont think so. We just look through different eyes. Therein is lifes real joy, our differences.

MmeW. Apart from writing beautifully you are keen eyed. I hope you never critique anything I write. The stress would cause me a heart attack, or would it be heart failure.(smiling)

My first reaction was that much of this book was painful, but then changed that to disturbing. There is much here that pulls and plucks at our feelings.

AnneofA, I was really bothered when Susie assumed Ruth's body during the sexual interlude with Ray --until I read your comment this is about taking back that which was lost, about replacing pain with joy. Thank you for explaining that so well.

Anne.....: I was just remarking yesterday that I always use far too many words when I write and when I speak. Thank you and thank you MMe. for your comments on Suzie taking over Ruth's body so that she could be "where no man had gone before". When Michael (my Godchild) was killed at 16, his mother was absolutely distraught that he might never have had the pleasure of a good sexual relationship. Her hope was, prior to that fateful night, he had experienced and enjoyed sex with a girl of his choice. Now this was his own mother, mind you, so when I witnessed Suzie moving in on Ruth, I giggled thinking of Michael and how appropos that chapter would be.

Haunting...........................Lorrie
Trandescent........................Maryal
Ethereal...........................Alf
Evocative..........................anneofavonlea
Intriguing.........................Ginger (Nice, Ginger!)
Disconcerting......................Dianne

These are wonderful comments! MmeW, I like what you said about how Ruth would always be wondering, the rest of her life, whenever she and Ray were intimate, "was it with me, or with Susie?"

Alf: Hooray for Michael!

Lorrie

in regard to question #12 up above:

Do you feel that out of tragedy comes healing? In my own personal experience, the answer is a definite NO. But in the case of Susie's family, I am inclined to believe that as a result of their final sharing of grief, Susie's family became whole again. And that is the point of this whole book, isn't it?

Lorrie

Just finished reading all of the posts I missed this week, and they are wonderful! I don't know where to begin in making a response of my own. I'll just scatter-shot, in hopes that I don't annoy anybody.
Lorrie, maybe the family isn't quite healed, still scarred by Susie's death, but better able to love life together than they were at the beginning of these events. But what about Harvey? Do you feel they are completely satisfied that he is the murderer, and that they don't yearn for retribution? His death was for me the most unsettling thing about the story. The author disposes of him so casually, that I have to believe she doesn't think that witnessed retribuation, or at least the opportunity to know his fate, isn't really important to the family. What does she want us to think about him? Pure evil? Complex victim? something in between?
And what of Ruth after the experience with Ray? To me she seems to be coming together, in her own Bohemian fashion. Her contact with Susie seems to have made her mystical. Her whole presence and what seems to be a new clairvoyant ability makes the story non-realistic for me. But not less valuable and admirable. I'm just still "unsettled," I guess. Going back and rereading certain sections and reading your posts has made me feel less frustrated about Harvey's death, but ....
Maybe that's what the author wants. For us to experience a new wonder about the beyond and about the possibility of contact between the living and the dead!

I have no idea just how we are to take Harvey's death and the whole problem of retribution, but I do like the question.

I think that Ruth always had a quality of "sensitiveness" about her which is what makes that brief contact with Susie work. She is very much like a friend of mine back in college days. There are people who see more and further than most of us. (And I'm not talking about those 1-888-Dial-a-psychic folks. There's real psychic ability which it seems Ruth has and then there is all the other hoopla which isn't real at all.) I think I'll stop here before I get myself into real trouble.

No, Maryal, no need to stop. I think i know where you are coming from. I knew a woman like that, once, and rather than say she was "psychic" or something like that, she seemed to have an awareness of what people were like, down deep inside, and I was constantly amazed at the ease with which she could understand other peoples' motivations and impulses. For instance, she was aware more than anyone of how deep another friends's depression was, and warned this woman's husband, who ignored her. He regretted it later when his wife attempted suicide, and failed, but none of the rest of us could see beyond our friend's surface cheerfulness and apparent wellness.

But to get back to the demise of Mr. Hardy. After reading of his somewhat banal end, I felt a bit frustrated at how little was said about that. But, as one reviewer pointed out, this is exactly what Ms. Sebold had intended---to give this unspeakeably evil man a truly ignnominious ending. No fame, no headlines, no frantic jury trial. In a way, it's really quite appropriate. IMHO

Lorrie

Remember the school project about the perfect murder? Didn't Susie's sister decide the perfect murder weapon was an icicle? So... if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Harvey's death wasn't accidental at all. He was murdered. I wonder who murdered him?

Judywolfs, how perceptive! You are absolutely right, and it never entered my head. That makes me feel a lot better about the ending, like it wasn't an afterthought at all, but instead carefully planned on Sebold's part. I still think the parents needed the body, though.

OOOOoooooo, the icicle! Totally forgot! I still think it was a non-human agent that killed him, though.

why people feel retribution is of any help to a victim.Of course one wants a serial killer stopped, but is it not the reality that finally peace will come by forgiveness and acceptance.

It is always so comforting to me when justice is meted out by God, as is of course the case with the icicle, finally the Divine seems to say enough is enough.

I wondered also, do you really thing Ray and Ruth were ever together in that way again. I dont.It says that when Ray was in doubt he spoke to her, he knows what she feels and sees, as Susie says she has now chosen to be haunted.

So glad to accept your idea, Lorrie that Harveys death was deliberatly without fanfare, as evils death should be.He so personifies evil for me, this character, so right that he should have no place no status.Good triumphs.

Wow Jo scatter-shot, you hit some bullseyes anyway, in our life, I think the "mystical" is a little more spread, those contacts with those gone ahead are there though, maybe need to be watched for, stood still for, but ever there.

Lately, I have learned just how condusive computers are to the spiritual, all this in in our heads, and out there in cyber space. How can it be that I know none of you and yet feel connected to all of you. I leave this place in happy tears. Judith

I find it interesting that maybe the reason Susie had been hanging on so long was to hear her mother say "I love you." "She had needed this time to know that this love would not destroy her...."

I also really liked the acceptance of Grandma Lynn's drinking as a part of her personality. Susie says: "I wish I could say that in that moment in the kitchen she decided to quit drinking, but I now saw that drinking was part of what made her who she was. If the worst of what she left on Earth was a legacy of inebriated support, it was a good legacy in my book." Abigail thinks: "Her mother was loving if she was drunk, solid if she was vain. When was it all right to let go not only of the dead but of the living—to learn to accept?"

Yes, judywolfs and Lorrie -- the icicle and Mr. Harvey's ignoble demise -- perfect. I would like him to stay forever unidentified, except that then Jack would always be looking for him.

Question 12: I woke up in the wee hours this morning and lay there for an hour mulling this over. Acceptance and adapting, yes. True healing -- maybe, it depends, probably not. I don't think Susie's family is healed, but they are ready to move forward and seek full lives. Lindsey and Samuel have the best chance at that, as they build their new lives and new family. Buckley still carries resentment about Abigail's leaving, but he has caring family and extended family members around him.

Does good come out of great trauma? Good has to come from somewhere after great trauma, or how could we go on, otherwise. We have to find something positive. A life that is all negative is a life destroyed.

Susan, I like the way you wrote about how everyone seems to "accept" Grandma Lynn's drinking, and to consider that as part of her whole personality. I agree.

********************************************************************
Anneofavonlea:

In your post you wrote:
"Lately, I have learned just how condusive computers are to the spiritual, all this in in our heads, and out there in cyber space. How can it be that I know none of you and yet feel connected to all of you. I leave this place in happy tears."
Judith, I've been reading this over and over and it affects me a lot. There is so much about this book that has bound me to all you other readers, and I am convinced that this is an unusual discussion. I do hope that others feel the same, and that we will meet again on other pages.

*************************************************

Judywolf:

We will have to call you our Hawkeye here. I missed that, too, about the icicle.

*******************************************************************

You know what I think is sad? To think that no matter when one reads this novel that there will probably be a missing child in the news, and a family trying to adjust to the new horror in their lives.

The book brings some healthy insight into the role of death in our lives..... "That in the air between the living, spirits bob and weave and laugh with us. They are the oxygen we breathe............"

I like to consider this when I remember my own dead children.

Lorrie

That is a beautiful line ... one of many!

"I was beginning to wonder if this had been what I'd been waiting for, for my family to come home, not to me anymore but to one another with me gone...." Together again was this family, on their way to healing, as Susie tells us that she began "to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it." I love that sentence.

Icicled, he was the old &*^&%^*@# Mr. Harvey. Perfect ending, perfect crime and done by God alone. Perfect!

You, my friends are all so special. You have been a huge delight to me and an inspiration to one another. Each of you has brought an important bit of yourselves to help others understand and heal. I love you!

Have just read all the posts since I was here last and am moved by them all. I cannot add another adjective to the ones given for when I finished the book I knew it would always haunt me. So haunting is my word too.

It holds so much and for most of us it is a reminder how cruel life can be and how we somehow survive. Not without our scars but in spite of them. It isnt that we put the pain behind us but we move forward and find some way to accept it.

Mr Harvey was my idea of what a really evil person is and his demise perfect. I truly hate to see all the publicity about people like him, I guess I am vengeful...I dont care if they put them in prison for life or execute them BUT I just dont want them to have their story told over and over again until it seems they become a celebrity and the dead forgotten.

To say I love this book is not quite true. I could wish there would never be a need for this story but it has moved me. And I wont forget it...someone said a classic..Yes I think it will be ..it opens the readers to deep thoughts and discussions with other readers.

I have felt we were together ....sitting in someone's home discussing it. Everyone here has become more than just the words they wrote but while I dont know what everyone looks like ...your words have made you whole to me.

Thanks to Lorrie who did all the right things, asked the right questions and who chose this book....love you all, anna

You see, that is what I mean. Thank you, Anna, for putting into words the feelings that we all seem to share. I must say that I have the utmost respect for this young author. I think she has written a marvelously effective novel. She has reached out, with what one could have thought was a repugnant subject, and brought forth emotions that many of us didn't know we had. The only thing I could regret is that any other works from this writer could be anticlimactic. I hope not.

Lorrie

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Definition of Success

To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

In another discussion coming up, "A Lesson Before Dying," someone posted a poem that I thought was quite appropriate for this particular book, too. I want to share it with you:

"So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

The last verse of 'Thanatopsis', William Cullen Bryant

(posted by Jeanlock)

"sustained and soothed." I like that.

Lorrie I am not surprised it was Jeanlock and I memorized that years and years ago ..it just touched me and the young person I was remembered it and hoped to do as suggested whenever it was my time to leave this mortal world behind and move onto the next step to eternity.

I know I shall always be glad I lived when I did ..had the parents, relatives, family and friends I have had...and continue to feel blessed to come to a good book discussion and read the wonderful thoughts and sharing by the participants. That is PURE JOY! thanks so much all...anna

Fellow readers and Lorrie~~ This has been a wonderful and productive discussion where people have felt safe enough to speak of pain. I can think of no higher tribute for a novel than that it speaks us into speaking our own truths which are like its truths.

A minor point, but one I would like to mention involves Susie and her Grandaddy. Remember earlier in the novel she wondered when she would be able to see him and sort of "hang out" with him in heaven?

At the end of the novel, Susie is with Grandaddy at last. They have not yet seen her Grandmother because she has not yet moved on. But Susie has detached herself from this world and has a new life in another. Of course, she sometimes goes back to catch up on her family, but heaven is no longer lonely for her.

Maryal

Oh my gosh... Ginger, that was the quote (To laugh often and much) that my kids chose to have printed on the remembrance cards for their father who died this past Thanksgiving. And Lorrie, The very you wrote down Anyway, that verse was the one my great Aunt Helen used for the remembrance cards for her husband, who was her best buddy for 57 years when he died. (but I think it starts "So Love" not So Live")

Back to the book: I thought that somehow having Susie use Ruth's body to experience sex was kind of lame, to say the least. On the other hand, it seemed perfectly ok to me that Ruth used Susie's spiritual being to experience heaven.

Something must be flooey with my computer - I'm not ascot; I'm Judy (judywolfs). Uh oh... what if I've switched identities with somebody, like Susie and Ruth!

Well, my goodness, some strange things going on here today! Glad to see you figured out how to come back despite the naughtiness of your computer.

Thanks to all for your wonderful posts and your compassion for each other, and thanks to Lorrie for making this a discussion where we could share experiences and feelings.

Thanks Maryal - I figured out what was wrong, I'm using another computer, and I had to log out and then log back in to resolve my identity crisis. If only everything were so easy...

Pedln, in an earlier post you asked >>>Does good come out of great trauma?<<< I think good comes out of life itself, just as (unfortunately) trauma sometimes does too. We just have to be careful to not let trauma overwhelm the good.

Hey, I was so flattered by everybody's reaction to my icicle theory! Sincerely, JudyHawkeye

Judy I thank You for explaining what happen as I thought a new poster at this late date and was just about to see that ascot got a welcome letter. You caught me just in time.

Thanks again, Ginger

This has been a remarkable discussion, and such a meaningful one to me. Funny—I was expecting the reverse, that Seven Sisters would speak to me. The sharing of painful memories has brought us close and, I think, given us all courage. Thank you all.

Now that we are winding down this discussion, I wanted to take time out totell you all how much it has meant to me. I have written to some of you, but may have missed someone, if so, I apologize.

It has been an unusual discussion. Some of the elements of the book seemed to bring out strong emotions; I know I had never planned to reveal my years of grief. But I sensed that I was not alone, and I was right, and as a result, we all shared a certain closeness that I believe is rare in an ordinary book discussion.

You are all wonderful, and as I wrote you in my letter, to me you all will be my "family!" God bless you all!

Lorrie

I would like so much to see any or all of you over in my new discussion of Ernest Gaines' mesmerizing book, "A Lesson Before Dying." There is still time to get it from the library.

A LESSON BEFORE DYING

Lorrie, I apprieciate Your Leadership in the Book Lovely Bones, the book and the Posters I will Never forget as to have read it alone would Not have been the same. Discussing with all the posters with Your leadership Made it come Alive to me. Thank You So Much.

Now "A Lesson Before Dying" I have read and will trully try to reread as I did buy this book also and liked it.

I hope to remain a follower of your discussions.

Thanks Again, Love, Ginger

MmeW (Sue) I do apprieciate your posts in all the discussions you are in, Thank You for being a part of Books and Literature.

You are a lot like Our Oscar Dorr on Senior Net it seems if I have a Question all I have to do is Email Oscar and he comes up with the Right answers as he is a Remarkable person, There is a name for this kinda of person but I forgot the name. Nuts. He is Always there for All of us in words we can all understand. I have met him and his wife many times.

Ginger

What a wonderful brave, bold, caring and compassionate bunch assembled here to discuss a book that I could not bring myself to pick up much less read. Thank you to each of you. You have made my heart sing.

Lou

This was greaa-a-a-a-t! We have got to do The Little Friend after this powerful novel. I know we have to first go thru the "endorsement" process but you guys will love it, I promise you. It has the most fascinating characters I've followed around in a long time. It deals with another youngsters death and his determined sisters resolves to solve at age 14-15, with her best friend. It is funny, sad, full of life and full of dark thoughts. It's our cup of tea.

Lou2 Thank You for your post letting us know how you feel about us the posters here. The posters here are my extended family and Senior Net is my home away from home where we can can and do share our thoughts, feeling with people all over the World oh that all the world could agree to disagree with the grace the way people do here.

May Your heart keep singing for ever with us in the choir.

Ginger

Alf, Upon Your recomendation I shall check on The Little Friend and may we share our thoughts on it with the Joy and Singing in our hearts that Lou2 has mentioned.

Ginger

Alf, your recommendaton is well received. It might interest you to know that Little Friend is in the proposal stage right now, and we hope to have it up possibly by March. Everyone please note. Thank you for the suggestion.

Lorrie

Dear Lorrie and all, Thanks for a wonderful discussion. You are a great group to be with. I really hadn't thought I would want to read this book, but am glad now that I did. The book, and you all, have given me some new perspectives about tragedy and loved ones and caring.

Thank you, pedln. For you and all the other wonderful posters who participated in this discussion, I will always have a special place in my heart. I also began this month with the assumption that it was just another book discussion ( I hadn't read it) but I found, as you all did, that one thing led to another and we began to share a really emotional closeness.

The subject of the book, (the death of a 14-year-old-child) seemed to act as a catalyst for some pent-up feelings I had kept smothered for years, and I found myself sharing some thoughts I hadn't had for years. Your outpouring of affection and sympathy, plus the coming forth of your own personal griefs, made this whole month an unusual one. It went swiftly, I must say.

My deep regards to you all, and my best wishes. You are a wonderful group of readers!

Lorrie