“Tell me you love me, he said… the end came anyway” (Sebold), this was the line that got me hooked in the first place and compelled me to keep reading further into the book that I once thought was bologna. The Lovely Bones is a book based on the death of Susie Salmon and how her family must cope with the pain of loosing her. Sebold’s use of style, intricate characters, and theme propelled this book to the high stature it now sits in.
Throughout the course of the book, Susie starts off as a young undeveloped mind but gradually starts to gain intellect as she tries to lead her family to her killer. “So I guess I was thinking that Mr. Harvey was a character, and I liked the room, and it was warm, and I wanted to know how he had built it, what the mechanics of the thing were and where he’d learned to do something like that” (Sebold). At first, Susie doesn’t even seem to be angry that Mr. Harvey killed her mercilessly, but she wonders how he went about doing it. She obviously did not comprehend the full spectrum of what had taken place that night in the corn field. But later on, she starts to feel horrible for letting herself be killed and for being so ignorant to what was really going on as she, “felt huge and bloated. [She] felt like a sea in which [Mr. Harvey] stood and pissed and shat” (Sebold).

The Lovely Bones contains many characters who change a great deal because of the events that happen following the death of Susie. For starters, Mrs. Salmon used to be a faithful wife, but as the stress and drama hit her head on, she slowly started to drift away from the family towards the only man who wanted to end the ordeal. This man just so happened to also be the police detective investigating the case who decided it was time to close the case because nothing could be done. Mrs. Salmon’s decision to leave her family for Len Fenermen ignites a unanimous rejection from the rest of the family. Lindsey, Susie’s younger sister, was always disinclined to be related to, “The dead Salmon girl” (Sebold), or talk about it to anyone, but at the end of the book we see a whole new Lindsey who is willing to remember her dear sister. Lindsey names her daughter Abigail Suzanne in memory of Susie.

The theme of the book can be summed up in one word: grief. Not just grief, but different forms of grief and how the different characters chose to mourn Susie’s death. Lindsey chose to mourn in solitude and isolated herself from the rest of her family as she, “Sat in her room on the old couch my parents had given up on and worked on hardening herself” (Sebold). As for Mr. Salmon, he was enamored with the thought that her death was somehow his fault and he could have stopped it. But we all know that this is not true and nothing could be done. Each character suffered in their own way until they were finally able to accept the fact that she had died and were able to move on with their lives.
I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a good old girly novel with a lot of feelings and depressing story line. However, if you are into a nice bloody gruesome death, this might be the book for you, so go on out there and buy you a copy today.