I don’t know what is with the books that I’ve been reading lately. I think I should choose a new genre because these books are making me cry. Stars made me cry so much and I can’t stop crying while reading The Lovely Bones.
The Lovely Bones is about a young girl named Susie Salmon who is kidnapped and brutally raped and murdered. (Do you catch my drift about the theme of the books I’ve been reading lately?) Clearly, this is every parent’s nightmare.
What I love about this book is how it’s narrated. Susie narrates the story from heaven as she watches her family – mainly her father, her mother, and her younger sister Lindsey – deal with the aftermath of her murder, which remains unsolved.
This isn’t a traditionally written first-person narrator. Usually first-person narrators are limited in their experience – that is, their own experiences and the audience isn’t given the opportunity to “see” into other characters’ heads. In this case, because Susie is in heaven, she is able to experience everything in the novel from every character’s perspective.
Particularly interesting to me, is how Susie begins to see her mother. She recounts a moment, while alive, when she took a photograph of her mother while her mother was unaware. Susie says that this was the first time that she was able to see her mother as something beyond just “her mother.” I think this is particularly profound for anyone who reads the book. Individuals, particularly daughters, rarely see their mothers as real people – who had lives, and hopes, and dreams beyond their immediate family. Mothers are there to fulfill our needs.
As the novel progresses, Susie, watching from heaven, and her mother begin to realize that she, Susie’s mother, can no longer be just a mother. She needs to be the woman she was before she got married and had children.
I’m in the midst of the novel and unsure how the author is going to bring Susie’s murderer to justice. Clearly the audience knows who the murderer is, but since he’s packed up and left town, I don’t know how the novel will resolve itself. Susie, herself, can’t move on to the real Heaven until she has broken ties with her concerns on earth.
The Lovely Bones is about a young girl named Susie Salmon who is kidnapped and brutally raped and murdered. (Do you catch my drift about the theme of the books I’ve been reading lately?) Clearly, this is every parent’s nightmare.
What I love about this book is how it’s narrated. Susie narrates the story from heaven as she watches her family – mainly her father, her mother, and her younger sister Lindsey – deal with the aftermath of her murder, which remains unsolved.
This isn’t a traditionally written first-person narrator. Usually first-person narrators are limited in their experience – that is, their own experiences and the audience isn’t given the opportunity to “see” into other characters’ heads. In this case, because Susie is in heaven, she is able to experience everything in the novel from every character’s perspective.
Particularly interesting to me, is how Susie begins to see her mother. She recounts a moment, while alive, when she took a photograph of her mother while her mother was unaware. Susie says that this was the first time that she was able to see her mother as something beyond just “her mother.” I think this is particularly profound for anyone who reads the book. Individuals, particularly daughters, rarely see their mothers as real people – who had lives, and hopes, and dreams beyond their immediate family. Mothers are there to fulfill our needs.
As the novel progresses, Susie, watching from heaven, and her mother begin to realize that she, Susie’s mother, can no longer be just a mother. She needs to be the woman she was before she got married and had children.
I’m in the midst of the novel and unsure how the author is going to bring Susie’s murderer to justice. Clearly the audience knows who the murderer is, but since he’s packed up and left town, I don’t know how the novel will resolve itself. Susie, herself, can’t move on to the real Heaven until she has broken ties with her concerns on earth.