After reading this book, I often wondered if I read the same “The Lovely Bones” that everyone else is talking about. Because to be honest, my opinion greatly differs from that of the
majority.
Basically, this is a story about a girl who was violated, murdered and now in heaven. but she is restricted to a small portion of heaven because she’s unable to let go of her life and her relationships on earth. At the same time, her family is torn apart by her death; her father wants to find the killer and her mother just wants to move on.
What a great idea for a story, which is what makes this book such a disappointment. Despite all the idea holds, the majority of the novel is spent on relationships and character development. Also, the story tries too hard to be deep and artistic, this makes all the metaphors, similes and personifications seem fake and stupid (on top of being pointless in the first place). Here’s an example “She asked for coffee and toast in a restaurant and buttered it with her tears.” What a ridiculous thing to write in a novel. I can easily see Alice Sebold sitting there for 30 minutes thinking “what pointless metaphors can I add here to make this book seem deeper that it actually is.”
Now here’s my main problem with this book; it lacks plot. A plot is what makes the story – it is the actual events that occur in the story, and it is the only thing that stands the test of time. Why? Because it is by far the most important aspect of a story. So it is therefore unacceptable for something considered as a story to lack plot. “The Lovely Bones” is more like a cluster of irrelevant events mixed with discussions about emotions and relationships. Therefore the story does not have much of a plotline nor does follow the classical plot diagram. Like any plotless story, the ending was terrible; it made no sense, there was no justification or explanation offered so the reader just have to accept that “it just happened.” On top of that, the ending poses an interesting question… what was the point of this story?
Bottom Line: this story had great potential, and offers something original; there were also times when the story gets rather deep. Unfortunately the story is extremely slow, lacks in plot and tries too hard to appear deep, artistic and meaningful. Furthermore, the ending was laughable. I give this story a 2.5/5
An important aspect that makes up the story may be a plot but I personally believe that conflict is central and fundamental to every story out there. This book explores the concept of death touching people's lives and how it is dealt with.
The emotions & relationships are not irrelevant. They are interconnected and show the multitude of mixed feelings and confusion that occurs from something that is life changing- death.
If you find the ending laughable- you obviously did not get what author was saying & you were not connecting the dots. All the imagery and use of prose was rather witty and subtle in establishing connections between the characters and some of the main themes in the book- such as acceptance, death, resiliency, forgiveness, social capital (strength of relationships), and many more.
I think this was a beautiful book and although I do not agree with your opinion, I do respect it so please do not be offended by this comment.
conflict is important, but is is driven by plot, a lack of plot leads to poor conflict. and the conflic was drowned in unnecessary attempts of imagery to make the story seem deeper than it actually is. because without the metaphors, similies, personifications, this story is just cliche after cliche and offers no event, or plot twist that i havent seen before, the originality is in the idea behind the story but that's where it ends.
as for the ending, it is laughable because it reminds me of a disney movie ending. the bad guy is dealt with, there is the act of love (this book takes a a step or two further than the kiss) and everyone lives happily ever after, the end. every element of a disney ending is there, just with a more muture twist to it. which makes a book that was hailed as one of the deepest books of it's year, and a "must read" seem about as deep as "snow white" or "cinderella".
i almost forgot, i don't think emotions, relationships, and character development are irrelevent. in fact a story without those thing would also be terrible. what i'm saying is that a lot of the emotions, relationships, and character development in this book were irrelevant, makeing an already slow story seem slower and making that lack of plot more evident.
but i guess we're boing to dissagree on all the points i've made. books are a matter of oppinion, what one thinks is great, the other might consider as garbage.