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The Lovely Bones is the story of the violent murder of 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who narrates the book from heaven, revealing how she was killed and by whom. Susie is oblique about the details of her rape and only hints at the brutality of the attack. The novel doesn’t focus on the subsequent and ultimately unsuccessful police investigation but instead becomes a nuanced exploration of grief and its ramifications. Instead of a clear progression from uncertainty to clarity followed by justice, the novel immerses the characters in a morass of uncertainty that they must learn to accept, a progression consistent with the unpredictable volatility of grief. This is the case for both Susie’s surviving family and for Susie herself. Despite the omniscient perspective that Susie acquires in heaven, there are no answers to her question of “why me?” Rather, to obtain peace, Susie must learn to accept that some things aren’t meant to be known.
In this regard, The Lovely Bones is a coming-of-age story even though Susie does not age in the usual way. Susie’s journey is juxtaposed with that of her younger sister Lindsey, who likewise matures over the course of the novel. Though Lindsey is able to experience the milestones that Susie misses—first love, first sexual experience, high school, college, marriage, and motherhood—she often feels as though she is living in the shadow of her sister’s death. In heaven, Susie identifies with Lindsey, experiencing some of these moments with and through her sister. Yet, the horror of Susie’s death means she cannot understand everything Lindsey is able to do and feel, like having sex with Samuel. Instead, Susie must embrace what it means to “grow up” in heaven. To do so, she must abandon her desire for human experiences, letting her investment in her sister (and the other members of her family) diminish. Part of the work of the novel is in showing how each sister learns to love the other without eclipsing herself. This realization happens for Susie at the novel’s climax when she briefly returns to Earth to have sex with Ray. By having sex with someone she loves and by her own volition, Susie gains agency over the violation that stole her innocence, maturing her and granting her access to “wide wide Heaven.”
Susie’s ability to narrate the story of her afterlife is enabled by heavenly omniscience, which allows her to see into the past as well as the present and to access the lives (and homes) of others. Susie narrates her evolving life in heaven, but most of the events she describes transpire on Earth. Sometimes the perspectives she includes complicate the novel’s meaning, like when she shares details from her murderer’s bleak childhood. While the beliefs Harvey develops are heinous, the narrative inclusion of their origin lends nuance to his warped and wounded cruelty. Susie tells her story because, as she learns when she meets Harvey’s other victims, doing so is therapeutic. She finds and receives comfort through narrative exchange, a value the novel explicitly embraces. Other characters, most notably Susie’s parents, likewise come to realize the importance of honest exchange.
The healing powers of narrative are linked to one of the novel’s main themes, the exploration of grief in its many forms. Each of the characters, including Susie herself, must navigate profound, even excruciating, processes of mourning. While each member of her family and community has suffered the same loss, what they endure in its wake varies widely, differences that create or exacerbate the strife between them. Ranging from withdrawal to restless activity, the characters grate on one another as they seek some form of comfort under torturous circumstances. The journey to acceptance unfolds differently for each character, and in each instance, it involves learning to balance self-knowledge with community, whether in the form of family, fellow victims, lovers, or the dead.
Susie’s family disintegrates because of Harvey’s actions, although the seeds of this rift predate Susie’s death. Abigail, her mother, had already begun to withdraw from her children and husband before the murder, which accelerates her feelings of miserable claustrophobia. Although Susie misses her mother desperately and, through her photographs, provides the keys to unlocking Abigail’s preexisting sadness, it is her father Jack who is more integral to the novel’s action. His grief is messy and externalized, evident in smashed bottles and a broken kneecap. While Susie sometimes finds this exhausting, she also acknowledges that he made her feel loved, both before and after her death. Even if Susie is at the center of the novel’s plot, Jack and Lindsey are also crucial to its eventual, and surprisingly hopeful, resolution.
For a novel that includes heaven as a key location, The Lovely Bones is surprisingly uninterested in religion. There are no references to deities, divine rewards, or eternal damnation. At one point, Susie even wonders if the heavens that others live in might contain horror. At the same time, however, the book is explicit that evil exists, represented by the figure of George Harvey. While it might seem clear that the horrors Harvey perpetrates are the work of a monster, Susie regularly insists that he is just a man. Indeed, there can be monsters in the world because there are people. Evil is just as common, she explains, as flowers, a fact she wants to impress upon the reader. It is not that evil is banal, but that it is everywhere. The best form of protection against evil is to abandon the illusion that bad things only happen to other people (or to those who deserve it) and instead to combat it every day, everywhere. Nor is it the case that Harvey escapes punishment entirely. His deadly fall, precipitated by an icicle (Susie’s weapon of choice) suggests that she does eventually get her wish: that Harvey meet his own demise.
It’s necessary to note that Susie’s persistent capitalization of “Earth,” as opposed to heaven, indicates what might be the novel’s most important message, which is that for the departed, life on Earth is an amazing joy. Even if Susie can see how her death created the possibility for new and vital communities and connections, a conclusion that identifies growth as well as loss, it is still the case that nothing is sweeter to her than living. Her maturity comes when she can enjoy heaven on its own terms. Still, the novel’s closing sentence, as Susie wishes everyone a long life, clarifies the message already articulated in its opening anecdote: an imperfect life surrounded by loved ones is far better than a life in paradise, experienced alone.
