The Lovely Bones [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

On her way home from school on a snowy December day, 14-year-old Susie Salmon is lured into a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case.

As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams", where "there were no teachers... We never had to go inside except for art class... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue".

The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow".

Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings. --Brad Thomas Parsons, Amazon.com --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

...makes manifest, in a beautifully written and complex story full of love and hope, the utter banality of evil. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

"Set in a heaven as real and possible as the earth is mysterious and shifting, THE LOVELY BONES explores, with clear-eyed affection and wit, the romance of family life, the shy, funny turbulence of adolescence and the painful tracks love and loss make through our world." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Sebold has given us a fantasy-fable of great authority, charm and daring. She's a one-of-a-kind-writer. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

...amazing. Careful and courageous, original and profound, The Lovely Bones spins the most painful subject imaginable into pure gold... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

...a keenly observed portrait of familial love... a deeply affecting meditation on the ways in which terrible pain... can be redeemed... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

This deluxe trade paperback edition of Alice Sebold's modern classic features French flaps and rough-cut pages.

Once in a generation a novel comes along that taps a vein of universal human experience, resonating with readers of all ages. The Lovely Bones is such a book - a phenomenal #1 bestseller celebrated at once for its narrative artistry, its luminous clarity of emotion, and its astoniishing power to lay claim to the hearts of millions of readers around the world.

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."

     So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on eath continue without her - her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling.

     Out of unspeakable traged and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy

"A stunning achievement." -The New Yorker

"Deeply affecting. . . . A keenly observed portrait of familial love and how it endures and changes over time." -New York Times

"A triumphant novel. . . . It's a knockout." -Time

"Destined to become a classic in the vein of To Kill a Mockingbird. . . . I loved it." -Anna Quindlen

"A novel that is painfully fine and accomplished." -Los Angeles Times

"The Lovely Bones seems to be saying there are more important things in life on earth than retribution. Like forgiveness, like love." -Chicago Tribune  --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

My name was Salmon; like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. This is Susie Salmon, speaking from heaven – which looks a lot like her school playground – where everything she wants appears as soon as she thinks of it – except the thing she wants most: to be back with the people she loved on Earth. Watching from here, Susie sees her happy suburban family devastated by her death, isolated, even from one another, as they each try to cope with their terrible loss alone. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet . . . ‘Moving and compelling . . . I sat down in the morning to read the first couple of pages; five hours later, I was still there, book in hand, transfixed’ Maggie O’Farrell, Sunday Telegraph ‘Spare, beautiful and brutal prose . . . The Lovely Bones is compulsive enough to read in a single sitting, brilliantly intelligent, elegantly constructed and ultimately intriguing’ The Times ‘A work of extraordinary structural originality, finding a fresh way to combine great tenderness of feeling with the most brutal events. You can sense its poise from the very first sentences’ Evening Standard --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Alice Sebold is also the author of Lucky, a memoir, and the forthcoming novel The Almost Moon. She lives in California with her husband, the novelist Glen David Gold. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.