Audiobook Review: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Unabridged, 10 hr. 57 min.

Recorded Books

Alyssa Bresnahan (Narrator)

August 30, 2002

★★★★★

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

 

Source: Borrowed the Audiobook from Library

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."

Right from the start this book sets the tone for the next 367 pages; we know who the narrator is, what happened to her, and get a glimpse at her personality. Susie is brutally murdered by a serial killer in her neighborhood. She has the opportunity to look down at her family and watch them try to put the pieces back together after the giant loss. She sees her mother, father, sister, brother, and other family friends change, evolve, fall apart, and come back together. But what would you do in Heaven – just watch people, no, not exactly…

My boyfriend has been telling me for months that I should read this book because he loved it. I didn’t really have anything against it, but I never had time for it. Upon not finding the audio book I wanted at the library I finally decided to read this. I LOVED IT! This is one of my new favorite books and can understand why so many people love it. It is a very interesting perspective to have the narrator remain fourteen over an extended time period while the rest of her family ages and changes. I also loved how everyone left behind still had a connection with Susie. The only thing I was slightly not happy with was the ending – but it was an appropriate ending, just not what I absolutely wanted.

One of my favorite quotes from this book inspired the title and carries the whole point of this book:

“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. The events my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The priceof what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life.”

I cannot wait to see the movie that should be coming out soon!

★★★½☆☆

 

The only thing that I think would make the audio book better would be to have a younger sounding narrator for the main character of Susie. She sounded like a middle aged woman, when the story is being told by a 14 year old.

 

You can listen to a sample of the audiobook below:

 

If you would like to preview the story before reading it, why not try out this excerpt of the book?

Reviews of this book by other bloggers:

• Reading Lark
• The Solitary Bookworm
  

Where to Buy: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | RJ Julia

 

Also by Alice Sebold:

 

Lucky

 

The Almost Moon

 

Find Alice Sebold: Website

 

 

 

Copyright © 2009 by The Maiden’s Court