TheDane's review

I completely agree! I could not BELIEVE this ending!

Yeah, I sort of thought Ruth knew, as well. I just couldn't believe that the ending was just like Ghost, and that the Susie's soul couldn't move on until she'd had sex?! She died as a child after she was raped. I really don't get what Sebold was getting at with that scene unless she just wanted Susie to get some physical intimacy that wasn't violent before she moved on to higher places? It just didn't seem appropriate that a young girl who was brutally raped would play out her earthly fulfillment that way.

I don't think Ruth knew. I think that at best, after all was said and done, Ruth would have understood - having special sympathies for the departed and likely forgiven Susie. But the point is, Susie didn't ask. She didn't even care to ask. She wanted what she wanted and didn't even entertain the thought that Ruth had a vested interest in her activities with Ray.

When we talk about Ruth's level of awareness, we know that she longed to experience the spirit world. The world occupied by those she felt all around her. I'm sure she was happy for the opportunity to visit the heavens, but I think we can be pretty sure that she is not aware of what is going on in her body - or even that Susie has taken it over. Neither of the girls really understood what was going on, so it seems (to me) a stretch to imagine that Ruth is a consenting party.

I loved the book up to this point. I loved the murder game at camp, the parts where she was in the house with her dad and there were near connections. Parts of it reminded me of Our Town. I also enjoyed how each chapter was like its own short story. It was macabre and ethereal. Then this chapter happened and ruined it all for me.

I won't say that I loved the book up to that point, but I would say that it had it's enjoyable parts and that I'd give it a much better rating had Sebold kept from that particular decision. I found the grandmother to be an enjoyable character (perhaps my favourite) and I kept waiting for her to really light into her loathsome daughter (Susie's mom) but it never really happened.

I read this book so long ago that I've managed to block most of it from my mind (except for that whole wretched end part). I was going to review it but I can't really top what TheDane has to say on it. Kudos.

You are so right. I couldn't really figure out why the ending disturbed me so much because I did like all of the stuff before this part. I even thought I loved this book for a while. For about a week I was telling all of my friends to read it, and then it slowly dawned on me how weird and creepy it was. I think I was brainwashed.


Great review!

I am very glad that I am not the only one to feel this way about this book. I just don't get the ending, and the more I think about it, the less I like the book.

The book definitely lost its steam after like 200 pages or so and I agree it completely went crazy when Susie possesses Ruth's body. But, I wouldn't go so far to put Susie in the same line as Harvey. She was fighting to keep Ruth in her body, but Ruth couldn't be held down and honestly, what did Ruth expect Susie to do with her body (besides maybe tell someone where her body was dumped or the whereabouts of Harvey). So, Ruth was really consenting to Susie. Still, the end of this book was really weak.

Hey Al, I think justifying Susie's actions by saying "What did Ruth expect Susie to do with her body" strikes a little too close to the explanation we are given when women find themselves raped after dressing in sexily. It may lend to the explanation of what occurred, but it is a far cry from justifying the action.

In the first place, it is not made at all clear that Ruth realizes that she and Susie will be switching places. There is no groundwork for such intentionality laid.

And presuming that she did know that Susie would be possessing her body, it would be far more reasonable for Ruth to guess that Susie might do as you suggested, telling someone the whereabouts of her corpse. Really, how likely is it to guess that the first thing a fourteen-year-old girl who was raped and murdered would want to do is have more sex. Seeing as how her only sexual experience up unto that point was a horrorshow, it seems reasonable to expect that using Ruth's body to screw around with Ray would be pretty low on the list of priorities.

I don't think in the world presented by Sebold that there is any way we can reasonably argue that Ruth was really consenting to Susie. Sebold just didn't set that up. Perhaps if she had, we could argue differently. But she didn't.

You were definitely correct though to say that the book was weak.

You guys just ripped my thoughts right out of my brain. I never got to finish the book, though, since I was over at a friends house reading it, and I ran out of time. I did happen to read most of what you peoples discussed, but can someone tell me how it was explained that Susie herself was a raper?

Hey Jen, Sebold doesn't herself state overtly that Susie becomes a sort of postmortem George Harvey—in fact, she portrays Susie in a positive light throughout the book and her rapacious act in the climax (i.e., the use of Ruth's body to gratify her own desires apart from Ruth's consent) is presented as the key experience that allows her to grown up and move beyond her initial experience of heaven.

Now either Sebold is being canny here in her presentation of the young Ms. Salmon, intentionally offering the reader a false perspective and judgment of the protagonist's activities (after all, Susie herself narrates the book from the viewpoint of her own emotional investment in its telling and is therefore an unreliable narrator) or she's completely ignorant of the person she's made her protagonist become. I'd like it if the former were true. My entire perception of the book would be changed from the one-note examination of loss to a more robust look at the effects of victimization on the psychology of the victimized.

Unfortunately, reading Sebold's oftentimes tortured narrative and dialogue (Ocean Eyes? Really? And as another reviewer here brought up, "she buttered her toast with her tears") leads me to believe that the author had no more sense or control over this point of the story than she had over the yards of poor writing that preceded it. In short, I don't think Sebold realized that she had turned Susie into a rapist.

Well, if that ending part want in the book, i would suppose that it could have the potential to be a great book, but not so otherwise. Sebold probably was twisted a bit when writing the end. I think that the ending (or the rest) of the book is like a lie; it shoves things out of perspective.

Thanks for explaining for me!

Thank you for saving me from a waste of time. I have seen The Lovely Bones out of the corner of my eye for some time and was considering reading it.I will move on to something better.

I applaud both your good taste and good sense.

Thank you for also finding that part of this book creepy and horrifying (and for finding the writing everywhere execrable). I wish I had the hours back that I spent on this book. It was terrible even for airport reading.

You know, sometimes you can be in the middle of consentual sex and want to bow out, and anything that happens after that is rape, so I think that three rapes would be an excellent way to describe this book. I didn't even make it to the end, I borrowed it, and still felt like I had lost eons of valuable time. I often wonder how other people could enjoy such an abomination.

I got the distinct feeling that Ruth did something to "channel" Susie and not the other way around. Ruth asked Susie what she wanted and she helped her get what she wanted...although, I was surprised that she spent all her borrowed time back on earth, "making love" with Ray. It was weird.

Oh, well played, sir. This review is brilliant, and made my evening.

@Penny - I'm not sure that Ruth necessarily took any active part in channeling Susie. If memory serves, neither of them had any more right to expect the shift than we as readers should have. Still, let's pretend that Ruth did somehow wish to give Susie some earthly time to say her goodbyes/make peace/etc. (She obviously had a great time up in the heavens doing her thing.) Let's even pretend that Ruth intended the switch AND had an idea that Susie's ghost would be horny.

Even so, Susie wouldn't have known that. She never asked for nor was given Ruth's permission to use her body in that way. If a girl wants me to have sex with her but does not communicate that desire to me and I happen to find her unconscious and have sex with her in that state, we should all agree that I am a horrible, dirty man—as despite her unstated desire, I had no knowledge of her potential consent and only just used her as I wished without concern for her agency.

And that is what Susie (by Sebold's hand) did. And to that I say Yuck.

@The Scarlet, Emily, and Amanda - I'm sorry for all of you that you had to suffer Sebold's torture of us all. I'm sorry for the hours we had all lost to her villainy. And I'm sorry for the abuse that we unknowingly subjected to our souls via such trash lit.

But I'm glad to have been able to play some small part in our mutual catharsis!