Linda's review
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
I know three stays is kind of skimpy for this book. I can't decide if this book is great or if I think it's juvenile. A part of my difficulty in classify my experience with this book is that it was so usual. Clearly one of the oddest experiences I've had reading a piece of fiction.
This book isn't cheap. It doesn't take easy melodramatic turns or easy answers either. Which I think would have been really easy to do given the premise of the book. Main character is a little girl who at fourteen is raped and murdered. So narrates from heaven. Interesting right? So, sounds like that would make it novel. Alice Sebold's writing has lots of cool phrases and a distinct voice. And often I was moved to physical tears with the beautiful narrator's voice on family and youth and violence and sadness. Absolutely without a doubt it was moving.
But some parts of the book were irratating at the same time. The characters were either good, or "real", or frail, or "complex...more
This book isn't cheap. It doesn't take easy melodramatic turns or easy answers either. Which I think would have been really easy to do given the premise of the book. Main character is a little girl who at fourteen is raped and murdered. So narrates from heaven. Interesting right? So, sounds like that would make it novel. Alice Sebold's writing has lots of cool phrases and a distinct voice. And often I was moved to physical tears with the beautiful narrator's voice on family and youth and violence and sadness. Absolutely without a doubt it was moving.
But some parts of the book were irratating at the same time. The characters were either good, or "real", or frail, or "complex...more
