 | A WRITER'S WIT |  P. Levi |
MY BOOK WORLD
Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown, 2002.
Author Sebold adopts an odd and unconventional point of view by narrating the book by way of a murdered fourteen-year-old girl. The most astounding aspect of the author’s bold move is that she so totally buys into this POV that it seems quite believable to readers. Young Susie Salmon is on her way home (swimming upstream? obvious catch?) from school when she is enticed by an across-the-street neighbor, Mr. Harvey, to visit his “den” in the middle of a cornfield. The rather intelligent girl knows better, but, as I said, she is ensnared by a master seducer. Mr. Harvey has murdered multiple females, mostly young girls like Susie, usually after he has violated them sexually. How he has gotten away with it for so long is probably a tribute to his wiliness: his obsequious way with other adults, his “shy” act in front of children, girls specifically.
Susie’s father right away suspects Mr. Harvey, but he has no proof, and, after a few weeks Mt. Harvey disappears from the neighborhood. Yet, because of Susie’s omniscient view of things (anyone going to heaven has this POV), she knows exactly where everyone in her life is at any given time and what they are thinking. Nice device. No other writer will ever be able to use it again!
In an ordinary novel, the comeuppance of the murderer might be paramount in the minds of most readers. What happens to the dastardly Mr. Harvey? I’ll tell you. In a very short scene near the end, readers witness Mr. Harvey attempting to pick up a young woman as they both smoke cigarettes out back of a store. She stalks away, calling him a creep, and surely as an act of God, an icicle drops from the eave of the building and does away with Mr. Harvey. It is all he deserves by way of attention in this novel. Someone else will have to tell his story, if anyone would want to. More miraculous is the ending in which, by way of a bit of magical realism, Susie has one more meeting with a boy she had kissed just before she died. Of course, now, he is twenty-one, which makes things different, but Sebold handles this problem very deftly. In all, a very satisfying novel that investigates a number of issues in modern life besides the perennial problem of creeps picking up and murdering children.
Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Betty Friedan
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | William S. Burroughs
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Annie Bethel Spencer
FRI: My Book World | Thomas Pynchon, Mason and Dixon
Author Sebold adopts an odd and unconventional point of view by narrating the book by way of a murdered fourteen-year-old girl. The most astounding aspect of the author’s bold move is that she so totally buys into this POV that it seems quite believable to readers. Young Susie Salmon is on her way home (swimming upstream? obvious catch?) from school when she is enticed by an across-the-street neighbor, Mr. Harvey, to visit his “den” in the middle of a cornfield. The rather intelligent girl knows better, but, as I said, she is ensnared by a master seducer. Mr. Harvey has murdered multiple females, mostly young girls like Susie, usually after he has violated them sexually. How he has gotten away with it for so long is probably a tribute to his wiliness: his obsequious way with other adults, his “shy” act in front of children, girls specifically.
Susie’s father right away suspects Mr. Harvey, but he has no proof, and, after a few weeks Mt. Harvey disappears from the neighborhood. Yet, because of Susie’s omniscient view of things (anyone going to heaven has this POV), she knows exactly where everyone in her life is at any given time and what they are thinking. Nice device. No other writer will ever be able to use it again!
In an ordinary novel, the comeuppance of the murderer might be paramount in the minds of most readers. What happens to the dastardly Mr. Harvey? I’ll tell you. In a very short scene near the end, readers witness Mr. Harvey attempting to pick up a young woman as they both smoke cigarettes out back of a store. She stalks away, calling him a creep, and surely as an act of God, an icicle drops from the eave of the building and does away with Mr. Harvey. It is all he deserves by way of attention in this novel. Someone else will have to tell his story, if anyone would want to. More miraculous is the ending in which, by way of a bit of magical realism, Susie has one more meeting with a boy she had kissed just before she died. Of course, now, he is twenty-one, which makes things different, but Sebold handles this problem very deftly. In all, a very satisfying novel that investigates a number of issues in modern life besides the perennial problem of creeps picking up and murdering children.
Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Betty Friedan
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | William S. Burroughs
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Annie Bethel Spencer
FRI: My Book World | Thomas Pynchon, Mason and Dixon
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