The Lovely Bones

Critical Praise

"Ms. Sebold's achievements: her ability to capture both the ordinary and the extraordinary, the banal and the horrific, in lyrical, unsentimental prose; her instinctive understanding of the mathematics of love between parents and children; her gift for making palpable the dreams, regrets and unstilled hopes of one girl and one family."
-Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Arts section review

"A small but far from minor miracle...a story that is both tragic and full of light and grace...full of suspense and written in lithe, resilient prose that by itself delights."
-Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

"Masterful" and "compelling.... Sebold's beautiful novel shows how a tragedy can tear a family apart, and bring them back together again. She challenges us to re-imagine happy endings, as she brings the novel to a conclusion that is unfalteringly magnificent. And she paints, with an artist's precision, a portrait of a world where the terrible and the miraculous can and do co-exist."
-Booklist

"The Lovely Bones is one of the strangest experiences I have had as a reader in a long time, and one of the most memorable. Painfully funny, bracingly tough, terribly sad, it is a feat of imagination and a tribute to the healing power of grief."
-Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

"What a wonderful writer Alice Sebold is. Out of darkness she makes light, out of despair and violence, beauty, out of deep loss a peculiar, hard-won gain. All her characters, for good or ill, travel to surprising places, and so do we, her extremely fortunate readers."
-Margot Livesey, author of Eva Moves the Furniture

"Set in a heaven as real and possible as the earth is mysterious and shifting, The Lovely Bones explores, with clear-eyed affection and wit, the romance of family life, the shy, funny turbulence of adolescence, and the painful tracks love and loss make through our world."
-Amy Bloom, author of A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You

"The Lovely Bones is the kind of novel that, once you're done, you may go visit while wandering through a bookstore and touch on the binding, just to remember the emotions you felt while reading it. Intensely wise and gorgeously written, The Lovely Bones is a heartbreaking page-turner. I envy the reader who is about to jump into the world of Susie Salmon and her incredible family."
-Aimee Bender, author of An Invisible Sign of My Own

"Sebold ingeniously, and with great humor and bluntness, distorts the typical coming-of-age story-her Susie Salmon, a winsome teenager, is already dead. Yet The Lovely Bones achieves a delightfulness, a buoyancy, a darkly addictive charm, precisely because Sebold never shirks her raw emotional duties toward this aggrieved family, this murdered girl."
-Heidi Julavits, author of The Mineral Palace

"In The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold depicts both heaven and earth with such skill that the many surprises in this book feel believable and familiar. I read every word with pleasure and admiration. The Singhs and the Salmons will be in my thoughts for a long time."
-Alice Elliott Dark, author of Think of England and In the Gloaming

"This is an extraordinary novel, deeply unsettling, beautiful, tender, unbearably sad, wise, with the author in absolute control of what would be moral chaos in the hands of most other writers."
-Joanna Scott, author of Make Believe

"Alice Sebold achieves something extraordinary in this novel: she makes manifest, in a beautifully written and complex story full of love and hope, the utter banality of evil.
-Lynn Freed, author of House of Women

"Alice Sebold's first novel is amazing. Careful and courageous, original and profound, The Lovely Bones spins the most painful subject imaginable into pure gold. The beginning is chilling, the ending gorgeous; there is no way to put it down in between. Reading it is a gift!"
-Karen Joy Fowler, author of Sister Noon

"I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoyed The Lovely Bones. Alice Sebold brings Susie to life-even as she looks down from heaven. And she never loses the voice and point of view-not an easy feat in such an original story. I can't wait to start telling people that they must read The Lovely Bones. Thanks for letting me have an early look at this treasure."
-Elaine Petrocelli, bookseller, Book Passage