Isn't She Lovely

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold is an overwhelmingly powerful novel. The subject matter—consisting of rape, death, and grief—alone is emotional and heart wrenching. The realism of her characters’ sense of humanity only adds to the drama of the literature. Suzie Salmon, a young girl who is murdered in the beginning of the story, tells the story of her family while looking down on them from her heaven. By removing Suzie from the plotline of her family, Sebold creates a perfect way for her reader to get inside the minds of Suzie’s family.

After suffering the loss of a loved one, any human is susceptible to going through all of the stages of grief: denial, anger, sadness, aloofness, and desperation. Sebold includes all of these human reactions in the recovery of her characters. Almost every character has a specific way of coping with Suzie’s death, some very different from others—just like in real life. For example, Suzie’s father Jack clings to the idea that she is still alive for as long as a lack of evidence can permit. Once acknowledging her death, he weeps and smashes the products of his and Suzie’s hobby—building ships within bottles. From heaven Suzie watches and says, “I watched him as he smashed the rest. He christened the walls and wooden chair with the news of my death…” Immediately after demolishing the reminders of his dead daughter, Jack Salmon falls into a fit of sobbing, so weakened that he can’t even conceal his anguish from his very young son, Buckley. Sebold portrays in Jack anger, sadness, and denial. Scenes like the boat-smashing one are present throughout the course of The Lovely Bones and are so realistic that they compel the reader to cry along.

Unlike her father, Suzie’s sister Lindsey copes with her loss in a very different way. Lindsey emotionally shuts down and physically distances herself from others. Upon returning to school, Lindsey withdraws into her own mind even more when a concerned faculty member tries to address the issue. Sebold gives a perfect example of Lindsey’s shutting others out with her and Mr. Caden’s conversation. Mr. Caden asks Lindsey if she would like to “talk about it.” When Lindsey replies, “What?” he answers with, “Your loss.” After hearing this, Lindsey, cold and blank, says only, “I wasn’t aware I had lost anything.” Sebold mastered the art of bringing tension to life with this scene. Every description of Lindsey’s body language, speech, or habits evokes this same awkward avoidance of the reality of her pain. For many human beings, this is a necessary step in the route to recovery.

Along with the humane and natural, there is the inhumane and the disturbing. Unlike either her daughter or her husband, Suzie’s mother Abigail chooses a path of recovery that to most readers is as shocking and horrendous as George Harvey’s twisted murders. Upon losing her daughter, Abigail Salmon also causes her other two children to lose a mother. She abandons her family for an affair, some plans to escape, and job at a vineyard. By showing a human’s capabilities for such selfishness in others’ time of need, Sebold nicely contrasts both the goodness and indecency that tragedy can bring out in people. Sebold so completely humanizes her characters that the reader can actually feel what they feel and experience their hardships. (557)