March 16, 2009

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I hated it. Just loathed it. It carefully narrates the rape and murder of a little girl in such detail that I have deep suspicions about the author. I feel unclean after reading it. I'm not going to provide any links to it as you should NOT go find this book.

Here is a link to a more informative and more detailed review if you want to know more about the story. I always feel badly slamming a novel as I know how hard it is to write them. Nevertheless, it is an awful piece of work. To quote the reviewer linked above:
What makes the pointlessness of the novel so aggravating is the selection of subject matter: the rape and murder of a child (and the aftermath). I'm not suggesting that such subject matter should be off-limits for fiction, but I am suggesting that if an artist wants to go there, it'd better be worth the trip. In short, she'd better have something damned important to say that justifies (and indeed requires) the fictional portrayal of such horrors.
Sebold doesn't.

~Suzanne

6 comments:

  1. OMG I agree so much! So refreshing to find someone else that hated this book as much as I did!!! It was just pointless... and her idea of heaven was ridiculous. Who would want to go back to junior high??? So many people recommended this book to me all starry-eyed, and I did not get at all what could possibly be good about it in any way.

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  2. I haven't read this one, though I did read Lucky by Alice Sebold, which is the memoir of when she was beaten and raped as a college freshman. It was very engaging, but also such a difficult, harrowing, emotional book that I just couldn't bring myself to pick up The Lovely Bones yet.

    Anyway, I guess I'd say to anyone who could stomach the extremely difficult subject matter, perhaps Lucky would be a better read than The Lovely Bones.

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  3. I have to completely disagree. I really liked the book. It is difficult subject matter - but no more so than most episodes of Law & Order shown in prime time. To me it was a story of the distance that comes with time. A tragedy happens and you are right there in the moment - btu then as time passes so does the pain that was felt.

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  4. I read this book a long time ago and can't really remember the content but I did remember that I liked the book despite its grim storyline.

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  5. I just wanted to clarify that it wasn't the grim storyline that turned me off from this book. It was the pointlessness of it, the stupid (IMO) version of the afterlife, and the lackluster writing. It wasn't a terrible book, I've read worse, but I really don't feel it deserves all the praise it gets.

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  6. It has been years since I read this book however it still stays with me. It isn't usually something that I would read, however my younger sister had to read it for her year 10 English class. She read the back and the thought of it disturbed her, so I told my mum I would read it.
    My mum went nuts when I told her about the book, the school got in trouble for that one. It is not an appropriate book for 15 year old girls.

    I hated the story of the book, but I did love the writing. It was not so much what she said but how she said it in her story. Something I will never read again, but then I don't have to as I will always have it in my memory.

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