“The Lovely Bones” is a book about all of these. (Ok…maybe not so much the magic bus, but you get my point.) This was a book about loss, about coping, about seeing things through different eyes.  This was a book was about guilt, and revenge, and the inability to grasp what is right in front of us.  This book was nothing short of brilliant.

Susie Salmon was murdered, horrifically as a matter of fact, by a neighbor. Her body was disposed of in the most morally disgusting way, and her family was left shattered.

Not knowing “everything” is what Susie was used too, it’s what we are all used to…it’s just a fact of nature.  We are not superhuman, we cannot be everywhere at once…we cannot see behind doors, or listen in on private conversations, but now, by the inconceivably disturbing means of one very sick man, Susie can do all of the above…and more.

Her “Heaven” as she refers to it, is a place where she spends her days seeing the bigger picture.  She sees what happens when a 4 year old starts to understand the meaning of body language, she experiences the beauty of watching her sister fall in love,  she sees her father, stuck in a perpetual loop of anger and determination, and she sees her mother…the mother that she never really took all that much notice of… fall apart, and fall away.

While the plot of the book is irrevocably sad, the glimpse at the human psyche is nothing short of breathtaking.  What do we do after the loss of a child? Is life the same? Can you ever feel whole again?

After only an hour of reading I found myself getting lost in the overloaded mind of Susie. In her quest to lead her family to her killer would she ever find peace? Let her sadness go and move on?

And an even bigger question… Can a family survive such tragedy?

I am now…without any preconceived expectations, or reservations, or self convincing a fan of “Alice Sebold” because this…a book which I thought would be unbearably sad and hard to read was more than that.  It was a lesson.

Happy reading my fellow Kindle-ites and remember: Sometimes the glimpses we see… are people simply trying to love us from afar.

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***** (5/5)