Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #528404 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

Lynn Freed, author of House of Women and The Mirror
...makes manifest, in a beautifully written and complex story full of love and hope, the utter banality of evil.

Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay
Painfully funny, bracingly tough, terribly sad, it is a feat of imagination and a tribute to the healing power of grief...

Jonathan Frantzen, author of The Corrections
Sebold has given us a fantasy-fable of great authority, charm and daring. She's a one-of-a-kind-writer.

Customer Reviews

A view from beyond the grave
A book which tugs at the heart strings.

Very well written story about a child rape victim, murdered by her attacker. The story of Susie Salmon is told through her eyes from her own little heaven, following the subsequent troubled lives of her heartbroken family and friends.

Beautiful but sad.

Sad, beautiful, haunting, uplifting and an outstanding debut
One of the best novels of the year surely (I read it in 2003) - and one that should be read by MEN as well as women! I notice that (as I write this) few of the reviews appear to have been submitted by men. This isn't a girlie book, no way. This deals with one of the most horrific of experiences and, sadly, it's the kind of thing we see on the news all the time : violent sexual assault. Of course this book is a work of fiction, but its theme is a very real issue and one that all of us need to take more seriously. Not the afterlife, but what (in this case) brought it about in the first place.

This is apparently Alice Sebold's first novel and what a special one it is. So moving was it that I often wondered if the author had suffered (in real life) as the fictional Susie's parents do.

One of the scary messages left in the mind after reading The Lovely Bones is that there's possibly a George Harvey near you right now, maybe he lives in your street, or, worse, he lives across the road from your daughter. He seems such a nice man, doesn't he? Be vigilant, please.

spoiled
The storyline is exceptional, written from an amazing viewpoint and thoroughly gripping. It was just a shame that the end was tabloid, sugary and weak. It seemed like a cop out.

Elisabeth