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Kenneth Womack (essay date 2004)

SOURCE: Womack, Kenneth. “‘My Name Was Salmon, Like the Fish’: Understanding Death, Grief, and Redemption in Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.” In Contemporary Literary Criticism 193, edited by Tom Burns and Jeffrey W. Hunter, Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2004.

[In the following essay, specially commissioned for Contemporary Literary Criticism, Womack uses the framework of family systems theory to examine acts of narrative therapy and the grieving process presented in The Lovely Bones.]

As with so many other works of contemporary fiction and film, Alice Sebold's bestselling novel The Lovely Bones (2002) fulfills our fundamental and indelibly human desires for establishing vital interconnections with the lost friends and loved ones who adorn our personal pasts. Their deaths leave unspeakable voids in our lives that the progress of time and the erosion of memory render...

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1. Introduction
2. Criticism
   1. Alice Sebold and Ann Darby (interview date 17 June 2002)
   2. Paula L. Woods (review date 7 July 2002)
   3. Ron Charles (review date 25 July 2002)
   4. Charlotte Abbott (essay date 29 July 2002)
   5. Lisa Allardice (review date 19 August 2002)
   6. Sarah Churchwell (review date 23 August 2002)
   7. Virginia Quarterly Review (review date autumn 2002)
   8. Stephen H. Webb (review date 9-22 October 2002)
   9. Rebecca Mead (review date 17 October 2002)
   10. Gordon Phinn (review date November 2002)
   11. Daniel Mendelsohn (essay date 16 January 2003)
   12. Joyce Carol Oates (review date 20 June 2003)
   13. Claudia FitzHerbert (review date 21 June 2003)
   14. Andrea Dworkin (review date 30 June 2003)
   15. Doris L. Eder (essay date 2004)
   16. Kenneth Womack (essay date 2004)
3. Further Reading
4. Copyright

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