The Lovely Bones

While unique in concept, there are so many things that bothered me about this book, I hardly know where to start.

First and foremost, while Sebold achieved great commercial success with this freshman novel, it still reads as a freshman novel. The schtick is clearly the only part of the book thought through and exists to cover the lack of other literary elements.

The first person, omnipresent narrative is clunky and not well explained (if the narrator knows what people are thinking show her figuring out that she knows!) and leads to a very much told, rather than shown, storyline.

The historical setting is both unnecessary and goes unmentioned for several hundred pages, so when reminded 200 pages in that the date is 1977, it is very confusing.

There are a plethora of characters, all of whom seem minor, since not enough time is spent on any for them to be more of a cliche.

The pacing is deplorable – several years will pass over the course of two pages and then 50 pages will be spent on a single day or two, with the years that pass without mention covering such important events as everyone coming to believe the main character's father on the identity of the killer, while the time that we focus on covers the sexual explorations of the main character's little sister. The payload of the book, as it were, comes in the last 20 pages, with no harbinger and no evidence that this was the intended ending.

The intended audience is also unclear. The writing style is clearly too juvenile for a larger adult/older teen audience, and the literary foibles are difficult to overlook, even for the audience of adults/older teens who read young adult fiction. At the same time, the focus on the book being rape and murder and several explicit sexual passages make this book at best uncomfortable reading for young teens.