The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold.

These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it.

Great book, and now I definitely want to see the movie when it comes out in January. Susie Salmon is murdered in December 1973 when she is 14 years old, and she then goes to Heaven, but it is a sort of "in-between" Heaven: she can still look down upon Earth and see everything that is happening there. Her father is sure he knows who her murderer is (and is, in fact, correct) but there is no evidence, and the police do not believe him at first. The novel spans over a period of ten years or so (perhaps a little longer) and Susie watches as her siblings and friends grow up without her.

I've never read a book with this sort of narrator before, and Alice Sebold kept me captivated until the very end.

4 stars out of 5.