I first read the book on March 13, 2010. I first saw the movie adaptation on February 17, 2010.
After a year, I came across with the audio book version, the first paperback edition, and the first edition hard cover in eBay and on discount tables of a local book store.
This is one of my favorite novels of all time by one of my favorite authors. This book is the reason why I got into writing stories. It's been a year since the first time I read this book. I've forgotten how this book ended up in my favorites. Now, reading it for the second time, I remembered why.
It's not because of the main character being raped in vivid poetic detail. (Although it was the reason why I got intrigued to read the book in the first place. It was never shown in the movie, if you didn't read the book, you would never know that she got raped. I know I am a fucking pervert.) It's because it tells the impact of main character's death to her family. I came to know what happens to a family of a murdered victim, in general, and it amazes me. It's because I'm a very sadistic person.
There's also the movie which was directed by Peter Jackson. To be honest, it's a shitty adaptation, he took a lot of things out--and I mean the [I]good[/I] parts.
I've watched the film adaptation of it before I read it. The actress who portrayed Susie Salmon (Well, let's just say "infatuation") is the reason I came to like the movie, and it's only for that reason only.
Picture of the book (First Edition):
[IMG]http://www.bookstellyouwhy.com/pictures/18721.jpg[/IMG]
There is also the special edition called: "Looking Glass"
[IMG]http://ec5.images-amazon.com/images/I/41tZ8j%2Bv07L._SS500_.jpg[/IMG]
[B]Info about the Looking Glass edition:[/B]
[Quote=Amazon]
In this limited edition boxed set, [I]The Lovely Bones [/I]appears for the first time with a special companion volume, [I]Looking Glass.[/I] This unique work integrates images of missing children with the opening chapters of [I]The Lovely Bones,[/I] providing a powerful visual experience and honoring the thousands of children who go missing every year. Many of these children are recovered quickly, but others are still out there waiting, and the search continues. Alice Sebold is proud to support the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an organization working to prevent child abductions, find missing children, and ultimately to bring them home.
[/Quote]
[B]Details about the book[/B]:
[quote=Wikipedia]
[B]Plot[/B]
On December 6, 1973, in [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norristown,_Pennsylvania"]Norristown, Pennsylvania[/URL], a suburb of [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia"]Philadelphia[/URL], Susie Salmon takes her usual shortcut home from her school through a cornfield. George Harvey, a 36-year-old neighbor who lives alone and builds dollhouses for a living, persuades her to have a look at an underground den he has recently dug in the field. Once she has entered it, he rapes and murders her with a knife and dismembers her body, putting her remains in a safe and dumps it in a sinkhole. Susie's spirit flees toward her personal heaven.
The Salmon family refuses to accept that Susie is dead, until Susie's elbow is found by the neighbor's dog. The police talk to Harvey, finding him odd but seeing no reason to suspect him. Susie's father Jack, on extended leave from work, begins to suspect Harvey, a sentiment his surviving daughter Lindsey comes to share.
One day Len Fenerman, the detective assigned to the case, tells the Salmons that the police have exhausted all leads and are dropping the investigation. That night in his study, Jack looks out the window and sees a flashlight in the cornfield. Believing it is Harvey returning to destroy [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence"]evidence[/URL], he runs out to confront him, armed with a baseball bat. The figure is not actually Harvey, but Brian, one of Susie's classmates who is dating Susie's best friend Clarissa. As Susie watches in horror from heaven, Brian beats Jack with the bat, breaking his knee. While Jack recovers from a [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knee_replacement_surgery"]knee replacement surgery[/URL], Susie's mother, Abigail, begins an affair with the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widower"]widowed[/URL] Detective Fenerman.
Trying to help her father prove his suspicions, Lindsey sneaks into Harvey's house and finds a diagram of the underground den, but is forced to leave when Harvey returns unexpectedly. The police, however, satisfied with Harvey's explanation, do not arrest him, which allows him to flee Norristown. Later, evidence is discovered linking Harvey to Susie's murder, as well as to those of several other young girls. Susie meets his other victims in heaven, sees into Harvey's [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_trauma"]traumatic[/URL] childhood, and realizes that he has made several unsuccessful attempts to stop killing.
Abigail leaves Jack, eventually taking a job at a winery in [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California"]California[/URL]. Her mother, Grandma Lynn, moves into the Salmons' home to care for Buckley and Lindsey. Lindsey and her boyfriend, Samuel Heckler, become engaged, find an old house in the woods owned by a classmate's father, and decide to fix it up and live there. Sometime after the celebration, while arguing with his son Buckley, Jack suffers a [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocardial_infarction"]heart attack[/URL]. The emergency prompts Abigail to return from California, but the reunion is tempered by Buckley's lingering bitterness for her abandoning the family.
Meanwhile, Harvey returns to Norristown, which has become more developed. He explores his old neighborhood and notices the school is being expanded into the cornfield where he murdered Susie. He drives by the sinkhole where Susie's body rests and where Ruth Connors and Ray Singh are standing. Ruth, Susie's former classmate who had felt Susie's spirit rush past her immediately after she was murdered, senses the women Harvey has killed and is physically overcome. Susie, watching from heaven, is also overwhelmed with emotion and feels how she and Ruth transcend their present existence, and the two girls exchange positions: Susie, her spirit now in Ruth's body, connects with Ray, who had a crush on Susie in school, and had made plans to go out with her a few days before the murder. Ray senses Susie's presence, and takes advantage of the fact that Susie is briefly back with him. In Hal Heckler's (the older brother of Lindsey's boyfriend Samuel) bike shop they find a room to make love, as Susie has longed to do after witnessing her sister and Samuel. Afterwards, Susie must return to heaven.
Susie moves on into another, larger part of heaven, occasionally watching earthbound events. Her sister gives birth to a daughter, Abigail Suzanne. When [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking"]stalking[/URL] another young girl in [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire"]New Hampshire[/URL], Harvey is hit by a huge icicle and falls down a snow-covered slope, dying from the wound. At the end of the novel, Susie's charm bracelet is found by a Norristown couple who know nothing of its significance, and Susie closes the story by wishing the reader "a long and happy life."
[B]Characters[/B]
[LIST]
[*][B]Susie Salmon[/B], a 14-year-old girl with mousy brown hair and pale white skin, who is murdered in the first chapter and narrates the novel from purgatory.
[*][B]Jack Salmon[/B], her father, who works for an [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance"]insurance[/URL] agency in [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadds_Ford,_Pennsylvania"]Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania[/URL]. After Susie's death, he is consumed with guilt at having failed to save her.
[*][B]Abigail Salmon[/B], her mother, whose growing family responsibilities frustrate her youthful dreams. After her daughter's death, she drifts away from her husband and has an affair with Detective Len Fenerman.
[*][B]Lindsey Salmon[/B], Susie's younger sister, who tries to help her father investigate Harvey.
[*][B]Buckley Salmon[/B], Susie's brother, is ten years younger than she is. His unplanned birth forced Abigail to cancel her plans for a teaching career. He sometimes sees Susie while she watches him in her heaven.
[*][B]Grandma Lynn[/B], Abigail's mother, an eccentric [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic"]alcoholic[/URL] who comes to live with the Salmons when her son-in-law asks her to help her daughter cope with the death, after Abigail leaves she helps with her grandchildren.
[*][B]George Harvey[/B], the Salmons' neighbor, who murders Susie and goes unpunished, even though the Salmons come to suspect him. He eventually leaves Norristown to kill other young girls. Throughout the novel she refers to him as Mr. Harvey, the name she had addressed him by in life.
[*][B]Ruth Connors[/B], a girl Susie went to school with, whom Susie's spirit touches as she leaves the earth. She becomes fascinated with Susie, despite having barely known her while she was alive, and begins writing about seeing visions of the dead.
[*][B]Ray Singh[/B], a boy from [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India"]India[/URL], (via [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England"]England[/URL]), the first and only boy to kiss Susie, who later becomes Ruth's friend. He is first suspected by the police of murdering Susie, but he later proves his alibi.
[*][B]Ruana Singh[/B], Ray's mother, with whom Abigail Salmon sometimes smokes cigarettes.
[*][B]Samuel Heckler[/B], Lindsey's boyfriend and later her husband.
[*][B]Hal Heckler[/B], Sam's older brother who runs a motorcycle repair shop.
[*][B]Len Fenerman[/B], the police detective in charge of investigating Susie's death. His wife commits [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide"]suicide[/URL] some time before the events of the novel take place and he later has an affair with Abigail.
[*][B]Clarissa[/B], Susie's best friend. Susie explains that she admired Clarissa because she was always allowed to do things Susie was not, like wear platform shoes and smoke. She has a boyfriend named Brian.
[*][B]Holly[/B], Susie's best friend in heaven. While the text does not say so explicitly, it is implied she is [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_American"]Vietnamese American[/URL]. She has no accent, and took her name from Holly Golightly in [I][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany%27s_%28film%29"]Breakfast at Tiffany's[/URL].[/I]
[*][B]Franny[/B], a middle aged woman who worked as a social worker before being shot. She becomes Susie and Holly's mentor in their Heaven.
[*][B]Mr. Dewitt[/B], the boys' soccer coach at school. Mr. Dewitt encourages Lindsey, a successful athlete, to try out for his team.
[*][B]Mrs. Dewitt[/B], Mr. Dewitt's wife, an English teacher at Susie's school. She teaches both Lindsey and Susie.
[*][B]Holiday[/B], Susie's dog.
[/LIST]
[/quote]
I had to read the book in high school, it was decent. The movie definitely didn't do it justice though
tl;dr
I read the title as
"The lovely boners"
I thought the movie was an abomination.
I DID think the pedo guy was a good actor and character, though.
Yeah, the movie was ass
And too much of it was end credits. 121 mins of movie, the rest is credits
[QUOTE=Cypher_09;29761002]I thought the movie was an abomination.
I DID think the pedo guy was a good actor and character, though.[/QUOTE]
Stanley Tucci was nominated for that role.
The murderer in the movie looks like my Uncle.
[QUOTE=Eddie;29760951]I read the title as
"The lovely boners"[/QUOTE]
Quit with the shitty immature joke.
[QUOTE=henrietta;29761091]Stanley Tucci was nominated for that role.[/QUOTE]
Good.
He looked great too. (I don't mean that in a gay way). I mean his appearance was good for the role.
[editline]11th May 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=BigOwl;29761944]Quit with the shitty immature joke.[/QUOTE]
There is absolutely NO way you can control the level of immaturity in this forum.
So just do yourself a favour and give up.
:keke:
Family Guy also made a very small bit about the book:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlL-pzVvQys[/media]
I read the book a few years ago, it was much darker than I was expecting it to be. I've never seen the film.
[QUOTE=Doozle;29782749]I read the book a few years ago, it was much darker than I was expecting it to be. I've never seen the film.[/QUOTE]
For your sake, don't. Stick to Jackson's LOTR which is much better. I don't know why he agreed to do the film.
I saw the movie. I bawled like a child.
[QUOTE=Amplar;29783525]I saw the movie. I bawled like a child.[/QUOTE]
What?
Is that you ryu-gi?
I love this book, despite how depressing it is.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
