The Lovely Bones

Our narrator Susie Salmon is already in heaven. Murdered by a neighbor when she was only fourteen years old, Susie tells us what it is like to be in her new place. "When I first entered heaven I thought everyone saw what I saw. That in everyone's heaven there were soccer goalposts in the distance and lumbering women throwing shot put and javelin. That all the buildings were like suburban northeast high schools built in the 1960s." Later she learns that heaven is whatever you truly want it to be and, sometimes, other people's version of heaven intercepts with your own.

Susie meets another girl, Holly, on her third day in heaven and they end up sharing their ideal home --- a duplex. Franny, their intake counselor, helps them adjust. As Susie gets used to living in heaven, she watches her family and friends on Earth as they come to the realization that she is gone forever.

Her murder occurred on December 6, 1973; back at a time when people still didn't believe things like that could happen. Unlike later when "kids of all races and genders started appearing on milk cartons or in the daily mail." She watches as her parents begin to grasp the un-retractable horror that has entered their lives. At first they try to reassure themselves that "nothing is ever certain;" that Susie is just lost out in the rain somewhere, and alive. But there is no speculation on our part, Susie tells us right off the details of what happened to her.

As the days go by and the evidence mounts, her parents still refuse to believe; that is, until the day Detective Fenerman tells them that all evidence points to their daughter's death and that the police will handle this as a murder investigation. And in that moment Susie sees each of her family members retreat separately into him or her self as each tries to come to understand the devastating news. Her father walks past his wife sitting on the living room carpet unable to comfort her and heads for the study to cry in the "deep ruff of the fur surrounding the dog's neck." When the neighbor tries to bring four-year-old Buckley home, nobody answers the doorbell. It is evident that something has changed in the Salmon household.

Susie worries most about her gifted and petulant sister Lindsay. Lindsay is only one year younger but still is not told directly about what's happened to Susie; instead she hears telephone snippets and bits of conversations between her parents and the police. After hearing her father describe Susie's features, she asks her father not to lie to her, so he doesn't; but even answering her question, he can't face the truth of his words. Susie watches Lindsay sitting alone in her bedroom trying to harden herself. As the story unfolds, it is clear that Lindsay carries the hardest burden, because no one will ever be able to look at her and not think about Susie. By losing her sister, Lindsay is in danger of being robbed of herself.

It is insight like this that made me just love reading this novel. Perhaps it is because Susie is narrating from heaven that she has a true and believable omniscient point of view. Because she cares, all of the characters are explored equally and their motivations, reactions and actions are clearly and evenly relayed. Not that she isn't capable of curling her lip in heaven, nor is she so accepting that she doesn't try to make people see things, especially who her murderer is. And for that matter she does watch her murderer. But it's watching her family and friends as they begin to heal where the heart of the story lies. She's there when her father comes to the realization that the immortality that should have come with bearing three children was not as assured as he thought; and he reacts by pouring his love into the living. Something different happens in Susie's mother. She gave up a scholarly life to have a family, so when her first baby is murdered, it just brings her up short. She goes into a vacant auto-mode, daydreaming about the time before she had a family, even wishing she didn't have a family. Meanwhile Susie keeps watching, hoping that they can feel her there and that a little bit at a time they can be more like the family they used to be.

Susie does find that there are special advantages to being in heaven; like she is now privy to everything, like when her thirteen-year-old sister gets a Christmas present from a cute boy in the kitchen and they kiss. Though Susie has to guard herself against living too vicariously through Lindsay. She also watches while her best friend Clarissa"spins away" from her towards the comfort of her boyfriend. And she keeps a watch over Ray Singh, the boy that she liked, the boy that she managed to have one kiss with before her death. And she follows the "not-so-standard-issue