The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
I’d picked this up and put it down again many times in the book shop. It’s about a 14 year old girl who is murdered, and looking down from heaven at the aftermath for her family and friends. You can see why I kept putting it down, right?
Then a friend sent it to me, and recommended it, so I finally picked it up. And couldn’t put it down again until I’d finished. Seriously. It was strangely gripping. Beautifully written. Moving, and sad, but in a full-of-emotion way rather than a depressing way.
Isobel, I also picked this up and put it down many times before I gave in and bought it in a second hand book shop and I couldnt put it down until I finished it.
30 Apr 2006 at 5:40 pm
Yeah, I thought it was too popular to be any good. I’m all about snobbery in my reading material. Then I nicked it off my friend to read on the bus into work and was bawling by page seven. Excellent stuff.
01 May 2006 at 9:59 pm
I read this and thought it good up until the last third. At which point I began to HATE it. I can’t remember why now, but I just began to think of it as an overly sentimental, ridiculous tale. Sort of the way ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ by Douglas Coupland went off the rails about half way through.
Although I would recommend ‘The Time Travellers Wife’ by Audrey Niffenegger for well written magical realism.
02 May 2006 at 8:35 am
I think I know the bit that lost you Elisa, it annoyed me a little, but eh, I let it go.
The Time Traveller’s Wife was absolutely fantastic, but I was in buckets of tears by the end. And for several days afterwards.
02 May 2006 at 9:07 am