The Lovely Bones by Alice Seabold Book Report

I read the book the lovely bones. turns the idea of death and murder upside down. Lovely bones is a serious and compelling read that touches the heart. What touches us is the way the author keeps us fascinated with the murder, the family, and the life of a 14 year old girl, Suzie salmon, after her death.

The book is written in the perspective of Suzie herself as she watches her family from her heaven. Even years after her murder, Suzie watches these people, wishing to guide them, to touch them. But she cant.

She can hear them, see them and know what their thinking but she can’t contact them. She watches as their lives drastically change. She watches her family go through hard times and pain without being able to help them.

But Suzie’s inability gives her great personal and emotional growth durring the book. She is portrayed as an average teenage girl at the beginning of the book, but she undergoes transformations and finally begins to mature and grow up towards the end of the book. “l did begin to wonder what the word heaven meant. I thought if this were heaven, truly heaven, it would be where my grandparents lived..

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I would feel only Joy and have no memory, no cornfield and o grave”. Suzie learns better understanding of what death is and learns to let go of her own. For Suzie’s family the event of her death is like a silent explosion, breaking her loved ones apart, and tossing them into an emotion, wreck they didn’t anticipate or dream they could experience.

Suzie’s father was devastated by her death, and becomes obsessed with finding her killer. Her mother emotionally releases herself from the family, and uses it to escape her own life.

Suzie’s brother, from who the murder is kept from for years, hones a streak of anger and Suzie’s ister seems to internalize the violence, “reshaping her life around it, in the way an oyster uses a grain of sand to make a pearl. ” CHARACTERS There are others too, a girl Suzie knew, Ruth, who becomes focused on the killing and sort of bonds with it. The boy with whom Suzie shared her first kiss. The police man who investigates the murder and becomes involved with the mother.

the boy samual that lindey becomes involved withand keeps her strong.

Even the killer himself, a creepy man obsessed with sex, death and bones, keeping remnants of his horrible acts. Plot On December th 1973 in a Pennsylvanian suburb, Suzie salmon takes as short cut home from school. George Harvey, a neighbor who lives along and builds dollhouses approaches her, and convinces Suzie and her curious nature to enter an underground den that he built. Inside the rapes and murders her, then dismembers her body. An elbow, the only part of Suzie ever found, is left behind accidentally as he returns home.

He disposes of the body, putting the dismembered pieces into a safe and dropping the safe at a local sinkhole.

Suzie’s sprit unwillingly flees toward her heaven. Suzie is reported missing and the salmon family hopes that she will come up. The salmon family is reluctant to accept Suzie has been killed, but it unconsciously sinks in when her elbow is found by a neighborhood dog, and the toque her mother had made for police find him odd, but see no reason to suspect him of the murder. Jack salmon Suzies father, later becomes suspicious, and beings to obsess and stress that Harvey is the murderer.

A boy from school is suspected because of a love letter found for Suzie written by him, but his alibi is obviously strong and thoughts are dropped.

Suzie’s sister Lindsey eventually comes to share theses suspicions. Buckley, Suzie’s ounger brother, too young to understand what has happened, holds onto the memory of her sister knowing somehow that she is not coming back. Jack, consumed by guilt over not having protected his daughter, remains on extended leave from work, and tries to cope as he increasingly isolates himself at home, and from his family. Late that summer the detective, Len fenerman, comes to tell the family the police have exhausted all leads and are dropping the investigation.

Jack later loses it and believes Harvey is in the cornfield and runs out to confront him with a baseball bat. It ends up being two kids from school, but before knowing this, Jack tires to attack and instead himself gets hurt and ends up in the hospital for knee replacement surgery. With this, Abigail, Suzie’s mother begins an affair with the detective Len fenerman. Still suspicious Lindsey sneaks into Harvey’s house, and ends up finding a sketch of the underground hole, but leaves quickly as Harvey returns home. Recognizing posing danger Harvey leaves and becomes somewhat as a drifter.

With this his land is bulldozed, findings of a coke can with both Harvey’s and Suzie’s fingerprint finally places him as the official suspect in the case. Although he is long gone. That fall another one of his murder victims is found, in Connecticut with a charm off of Suzie’s bracelet nearby. The charmed is later linked to Suzie, and as more evidence is uncovered Harvey is realized as a serial killer who prey on young girls. Following this, in the winter Abigail leaves her husband and family.

She moved to California to escape and finds a Job in a winery.

This results in her mother grandma Lynn, moves into the home to help care for Buckley and Lindsey. Later years, Lindsey becomes engaged to her boyfriend Samuel heckler. Returning home from graduation. Sometime after the return home and after celebrations, Jack suffers a heart attack. The emergency prompts Abigail to return home.

The reunion is somewhat sullen, from buckles lingering bitterness, for her abandonment. When Harvey returns to explore his old neighborhood, he drives by the sinkhole where Suzie’s body rests. Ruth Coners and ray Singh are there at that point but don’t notice his car pass.

Ruth an old classmate, who had felt Suzie sprit the day of the murder senses something and becomes overwhelmed. Suzie watches from heaven is also overwhelmed, and somehow Suzie connects with her and the exchange positions.

Ray senses Suzie’s presence, now in Ruth’s body, and takes advantage of the face that Suzie’s back for the time being. Both knowing their love for each other end up making love before Suzie returns to heaven. Eventually Suzie moves on, still watching events from earth from time to time and watching her family.