The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold
Little, Brown

"The Lovely Bones" is not an easy book to read. It also was likely not an easy book to write. "The Lovely Bones" begins with the rape and murder of 14-year-old Susie Salmon, lured on her walk home from school by a neighbor. Narrated from Susie's heaven, the book unfolds the "lovely bones" knitting together as her friends and family struggle to deal with her death. Her father becomes obsessed with finding her killer. Her mother becomes distant and aloof, full of regret. Her sister becomes tough, calculatedly "hard." Her little brother waits for Susie to come back.

Yet Susie's brother, too young to grasp the finality of death, is closer to the truth than any of them. Susie's afterlife is only a sort of permanent present, an amalgamation of all her adolescent dreams and ambitions. Since she never got to go to high school, her heaven contains a high school, only one with a swing set and no textbooks except fashion magazines. Her reminiscences of earth have the sweet tinge of things lost or not appreciated until it is too late: the smell of skunks; her first and only kiss, "like an accident — a beautiful gasoline rainbow."

All this could be too sad, too sentimental, too much — and at times, perhaps it is. But Sebold refuses to let the novel become a string of "10,000 Things to be Happy About." The rape scene, and the family's anger that follows, are real, vibrant and terrifying. Susie learns that loving life means loving "the helplessness of being alive" with all its consequences.

The book is smoothly written. Yet beneath the surface it feels conflicted. The conflicts are not between characters, but between the reader and author, the author and characters, the author and herself. The novel's resolution is too easy — it is the author shying away from what she has put into motion, the creator who cannot stand to inflict another misery. Understandably, she is exhausted. It is her exhaustion that makes her tack on an ending that is not earned. Sebold has all the power and talent to carry the novel home, but she has too much pity to let Susie's family suffer another minute.

"Haunting" is too trite a word. But "The Lovely Bones" lingers long after the last page, an unresolved struggle. Despite having a neat conclusion, there is no closure. The pain of loss is too near to wipe away with easy justice. Yes, the book can leave a reader unfulfilled, and it can be manipulative. But through it all, it remains a book to love without reason, without criticism, without shame. The way that people in heaven learn to love the earth.

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