The Lovely Bones

The book I chose to read for my second book report was The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. There are 328 pages in this book, and besides the picture of Suzie’s charm bracelet on the front cover, there are no illustrations in the book. My older sister read this book a while ago and recommended it to me.

The setting of the story takes place in Norristown, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, in 1973-1981, “before kids of all races and genders started appearing on milk cartons and in the daily mail ... when people believed things like that [Suzie’s murder] didn't happen” (5). Her murder takes place in an underground den in the middle of a cornfield during a wintry night, which can have a gloomy affect on people.

Suzie Salmon was 14 years old when she died. She was a white girl with mousy brown hair. She was not a very physically strong girl, but she was very intelligent: a member of the Chess Club, Chem Club, and got good grades in school. According to her father, Jack, Suzie has a lot of spunk, which he backs up with a story about how she was jealous when her little sister Lindsey was born and peed on her when she was in her carrier. She is the narrator of the story and tells it from heaven.

The story starts with Suzie introducing herself and how she died. On December 6, 1973 she took a shortcut through a small cornfield from her junior high to her home. When she stopped to taste a snowflake, her neighbor, George Harvey (referred to as Mr. Harvey) stopped her and persuaded her to enter an underground den he built nearby. Once she entered, he raped and stabbed her, and cut her body into small parts so it was easier to carry. Unknown to Mr. Harvey, her elbow fell out of his bag on the way home, the only body part to ever be recovered of her body.

She arrived in heaven and met a fellow teenager Holly. They were both approached by a friendly adult named Franny, who was their intake counselor for heaven. Suzie met other people in “her” heaven, and learned that anything that could be hers if she wished for it.

Back on Earth, Mr. Harvey disposed of Suzie’s body in a safe and threw it in a sinkhole. He successfully destroyed most other evidence except for a charm bracelet, which he tossed in an unfilled pond. The Salmon family found it hard to accept the police report that Suzie had been killed, but then they do when her hat and elbow were found. At first, nobody suspected Mr. Harvey of having anything to do with her death, but later on Mr. Salmon annoyed the police with suspicions of him, which Suzie’s sister Lindsey also came to share those suspicions.

In heaven, Suzie realized that her heaven is only a stop a way to a larger, more permanent heaven. When she asked Franny about how to expand it, Franny told her that she had to give up on Earth. She later watched the police drop the investigation on the murder as they had no leads or reasonable suspects.

One day Mr. Salmon had to get knee replacement surgery and was in the hospital for a while. In the midst of this, Abigail Salmon, Suzie’s mother, began having an affair with Len Fenerman, a widower and the police investigator on Suzie’s murder who befriended the family.

Later, still overcome with suspicion, Lindsey and Jack devised a plan for Lindsey to sneak into Mr. Harvey’s house during soccer practice and search for any evidence that could prove that he killed Suzie.