The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones

If this had not been an assignment for a class, I never would have made it past the rape and murder scene. I agree with Christine that it was extremely hard to get through. Because it was required to so, I continued on and am pleased that I did. Sebold handled this subject with as much dignity as she could muster in describing a horrific happening. I thought of the things that are done in movies and television and realize that it could have been much worse. I know that there has been a great deal of controversy surround Dakota Fanning's' role as Susie and can only imagine how horrible Hollywood made the scene. I will not see it, but as disturbing as it was, the book was a worthwhile read.
I finished this book on Monday and have had it in my head since I turned the last page. It is not only the violent way Susie died that haunts me, but the fact that Susie is right. Earth is a place where "there is too much blood" and horrible things happen. The Lovely Bones, for me, was reminiscent of a great novel by Dennis Lehane called Mystic River. While I believe that Lehane's novel is the better of the two, they both deal with the injustice and horror of violence against children and the effect of that it has on families and communities. Having children makes it impossible for me to imagine the grief that a family suffers after experiencing what the Salmons did. I will not allow myself to even go there since the mere idea of it, as a parent, is too terrifying to contemplate. As a parent, we are forced to realize that the danger that faces children is a constant threat to us all.
After struggling through the intense emotions that were played on surrounding the violent nature of the book, I was able to find much more than that in the pages of this novel. Sebold masterfully portrayed to her reader what it is like to be a child and brought to mind the difficulties inherent in growing up in her characters. We see the awkwardness in Ruth, experience bigotry through Ray and the struggle for independence and maturity through Lindsey. Buckley shows us how frustrating it is to find your place in the world and claim it as your own. In creating these characters, Sebold reminded me of what it was like to be young and have so little control over your surroundings. She was able to pull me into the novel on a level that is not easy to achieve as a writer, by reminding me that I too had felt these things and faced the same struggles. In essence, as children we have little to no control over our lives.
In many respects, Susie is the embodiment of all these elements. Her total lack of control is evident in every aspect of the story. As a teenager she longs for and strives for ways to gain control but has it violently stripped from her grasp before she is able to attain her goal. In her final moments she is completely without control and at the mercy of a madman. When we first meet her she tells us that she had contempt for the structured surrounding at school (1). We also learn that her quote in the yearbook deals with that very issue: "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." She loves photography because with the use of it she can gain power over the people on the other side of the camera, even her parents (240). She is able to stop and preserve whatever moment in time she chooses (212) in an almost Godlike fashion. Even her fascination with the ships in the bottles illustrates her need for control. She relished in the fact that, when the masts were released, the world in the bottle depended solely on her (274).
After her death, her story is a struggle to release the control her murder has had on others. Even though we know, through Fanny, that the path to true peace lies in letting go, we take a journey with Susie to that discovery. Not only had she been trapped inside the earth (12) in death but in the "inbetween", she was still as "trapped" as the penguin "in the perfect world." Only when she was able to relinquish her quest for control was she able to "see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it." (320) and find true peace in letting go and release her family to live the life of the living.