The Lovely Bones (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Alice Sebold
- First Published: 2002
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1973-1983
- Setting: Norristown, Pennsylvania, and the eastern United States
- Principal Characters: Susie Salmon, Abigail Salmon, Jack Salmon, Lindsey Salmon, Buckley Salmon, Ray Singh, Ruana Singh, Ruth Connors, Len Fenerman, Brian Nelson, George Harvey, Samuel Heckler, Hal Heckler, Grandma Lynn, Holly, Franny
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Girls, 1970’s, Children, Family or family life, United States or Americans, Parents and children, Teenagers, Crime or criminals, Murder or homicide, Twentieth century, Immortality, Ghosts or apparitions, 1980’s, Rape, Victims, Death or dying, Afterlife, Mortality, Heaven
- Locales: Pennsylvania, East (U.S.)
Drawing on folkloric and religious motifs and ideas, Alice Sebold presents a remarkable, complex, and comforting vision of heaven as the platform from which Susie Salmon, raped and murdered by a neighbor at the age of fourteen, tells her story. It is a heaven that indeed has many “mansions,” one of which is the “wide wide Heaven,” which can provide one’s every desire. It also grants omniscience to the narrator. The word Susie’s grandfather has for the dominant quality of this heaven is “comfort,” and oddly comforting, indeed, is Alice Sebold’s novel because it...
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See Also:
- - The Lovely Bones summary and study guide in the eNotes.
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