In an average story, choosing to start the first chapter with a major death is a gimmick. Even if it's a crime novel, the lack of pathos allowed for a character is an effective way to keep the brutality from stinging as much. It makes it almost clinical to what follows. However, Alice Sebold's debut novel is easily the exception that proves the rule. "The Lovely Bones" is a story about murder and rape, but mostly uses it as an establishing of something deeper. The book posits that there's more to a character's life than one traumatic event, and it paints it through a clever narration of a dead teenage girl. Despite its morbid start, it's surprisingly uplifting; depicting the challenges of grief and revenge through the lens of someone who can't. It's a provocative story that will at times wallop the reader with emotion and most of all present a more honest view of how humanity can better itself.
The story opens with a passage detailing a penguin snow globe. Inside, the penguin is in a perfect world. From the outset, the reader would assume that the perfect world that protagonist Susie Salmon (like the fist) is alluding to heaven - the place where she spends most of the story. It's a world that is perceived as perfect, and is different for everyone. The book avoids any religious symbolism in favor of a secular view. For Susie, it's a high school where she gets to live the life she never had - meeting people and potentially having that deeper bonding with people that her budding hormonal tendencies never got to act out on, in large part because neighbor creep Mr. Harvey lures her into a rape and murder that starts so abruptly and fills the reader with shock. It's detailed, but not graphic in an exploitative way. It's enough to capture the trauma of the event before Susie enters "the perfect world" and leaves her family behind in the 1970's.
It's an opening that shoots off the page like fireworks. Where can a story that starts with a characters' death possibly go from here? The truth is that it's where everything starts and the young and naive Susie begins to see the world on a deeper, and more personal level. From her perch in heaven, she can look down on her family, Mr. Harvey, and a world that has begun to move on without her. It's the perfect piece of fantasy that flows into the heartbreaking plot devices so effortlessly. With little detail to judge Susie's time on Earth, the reader is taken through the family's grieving process as they deal with Susie's death. There's the tragic reality that nobody knows that it's Mr. Harvey, and it all feels so painful to read as the joy becomes something removed and distant. The teenage years should be when Susie is discovering herself, but instead end with a feeling of violation and disappointment, never knowing what true love or any adult feelings actually are, only the thought of them.
The story posits that Susie is living her life vicariously through her sister and mother, finding their lust for life a perfect way to fill her own gap. She watches them grow and experience joy - without her - and there's a sadness over the idea that Susie isn't there, even if she would take it for granted. She has no influence on their happiness, and she has no way to experience those moments of joy when her sister has a sexual awakening. It's sad because her experience with sex is predominantly awful, and the joy in her sister leaves a lot of odd feelings inside. As much as it could be seen as creepy voyeurism, it's also a depiction of the life Susie wasn't allowed to live. Even if it was mundane, she would have these memories of growing into an adult with an adult's body. She would not have to watch the world with a sense of curiosity, forever trapped in her young body.
As much as the book deserves credit for not painting a specific vision of heaven, it also should be noted that it has a lot of powerful views on how humanity treats each other. As much as Susie could forever be miserable as the victim, she evolves to look away from the depressing life of Mr. Harvey - who gets more than a fair share of space in the novel to become sympathetic even if he's truly awful. It creates a complex view of the world, and one that may leave the reader wanting revenge for someone who can never have it. The book touches constantly on the suburbs' history of rape and murders, even detailing several cases as Susie meets them in the story. It's unnerving in one sense, but to add pathos and humor to the characters beyond the trauma is inspiring. They're defined in one sense by the awful action, but as Sebold explores that those that love these girls and women will look beyond it and find what made them matter. Society will never be rid of the Mr. Harveys of the world, but there can be a way to unite against them.
Sebold's book is a tightrope of sorts, managing to be one of the bleakest subjects possible, in part inspired by her own traumatic incident that inspired the memoir "Lucky." Still, she provides a sensitivity to the story that allows the characters to evolve beyond cliches, even having Susie suggest early on that not all people are bad. She tries to avoid depicting black-and-white characters moralistically, and in the process finds ways that trauma isolates people but also how love prevails, and letting go of the awful past is sometimes all that can be done. The title's lovely bones aren't revealed until the final few pages of the story, and even that seemingly morbid detail is given integrity and heart that adds power to the image. It's a book that starts off thinking one way, that heaven is a "perfect world," and by the end finds enough sentiment and heart to make the reader think otherwise. Sebold has a knack for in depth heart, humor, horror, and the pathos that make the dead girl trope usually more repugnant. Instead of reveling in the morbid, she finds ways to be uplifting. It's a challenge that paid off, and makes this one great example of how fiction continues to grow in thought provoking ways.
No comments:
Post a Comment