The Insightful Bones

At the beginning of the summer, I faced the difficulty of deciding which book I would read for my required reading. There were so many well-known authors and novels from which to choose. Ultimately I selected four of the nine available books: A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Lovely Bones, Old School, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Aside from Pride and Prejudice, I read five other free-reading books, including Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper and Stephenie Meyer’s four novels from the Twilight Saga (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn).

Once I settled on reading as many novels from the list as possible, and as soon as I returned from Africa, I began reading A Thousand Splendid Suns. I was struck by the somewhat depressing and morbid tale of two very different women caught in the middle of Afghanistan’s most troubling times. All the death and despair left me with feelings of anguish and sadness that the characters bore throughout the novel. Even the rare moments of optimism, such as Tariq’s reappearance, were not enough for me to feel hopeful about a pleasant and conclusive ending. Fortunately the pieces of the puzzle came together with a positive outlook for the future. Nonetheless, the novel’s gloom stuck with me as I began The Lovely Bones.

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I started this book considering this novel’s focal point is Susie Salmon’s death and the chain of events following her murder. Strangely enough however, The Lovely Bones did not seem for me as macabre as A Thousand Splendid Suns. Sure, there were definitely some moments when I felt compassion for Susie’s family, particularly for her father. I can vividly recall how I felt as he went to hunt and kill Mr. Harvey in the cornfield and instead found Clarissa and Brian. I wish I could have been there when some people “saw” Susie standing beside them. I began to cheer for the family as they slowly but surely salvaged their lives, their relationships, and their happiness. There were goose bumps on my arms as I pored through the moments of Susie’s return to Earth, and I felt nothing less than blissfully happy for her. Admittedly, I wish that there could have been more justice served to Mr. Harvey, but it is a sad fact that many child molesters and murderers go unpunished.

What interested me most about The Lovely Bones are the novel’s convincing portrayal of human emotions and its ethereal and spiritual quality. I found the novel highly appealing because of the family dynamics throughout the story. Lindsey is very much obligated to step up and be the big sister to Buckley, and, in doing so, she matures rapidly. Both her mother and father become absent. Jack becomes obsessive about Susie’s murder and Mr. Harvey. Consequently, Abigail becomes distant from Jack and the rest of the family as she has an affair with Len Fenerman. Although I cannot condone what Abigail did, I could understand how she just wanted to avoid feeling the pain from her daughter’s death. The characters I most related to were Lindsey and Buckley. Lindsey grows up, and Buckley, as a very young kid, has to deal with very abnormal circumstances that he should not have to face. In the end, the entire family is able to reach some sort of healthy catharsis, and I felt very relieved and satisfied at the novel’s end (much more so than after A Thousand Splendid Suns).

It is, I believe, undoubtedly unusual for an author to write from the perspective of a deceased rape/murder victim. Susie Salmon, however, is not cynical, obnoxious, or moody like most teenagers are. Her death seems to be a catalyst for her emotional and personal maturity. Her family’s pain becomes her own pain, as she turns her back on Earth to avoid watching Brian beat up her father. Susie herself becomes so incredibly involved with the life on Earth that her wish to return to be with Ray Singh is granted. Even though this is a purely fictional novel, after I finished reading it, I found myself wondering if perhaps it is possible that we see our deceased loved ones around us in rare moments of our lives. Is the heaven Susie describes possible; does that kind of heaven exist? Obviously, we will never know for sure until it is our turn to move on, but the possibilities are endless. (744)