The Lovely Bones

[beautifulmess]

I'm about halfway through Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.  

[glatisant]

I'm about halfway through Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.

What do you think of it so far?

[beautifulmess]

I like it a great deal. Though a lot of it is dark, I still manage to find myself smiling in certain parts. It's interesting to see the way loss affects the Salmon family, and how each one deals with it so differently.  

[glatisant]

I like it a great deal. Though a lot of it is dark, I still manage to find myself smiling in certain parts. It's interesting to see the way loss affects the Salmon family, and how each one deals with it so differently.

Yes.  I thought the depiction of bereavement was the most gripping part of the book--messy and painful and funny and very convincing.  (I can only imagine how it would read to someone who has a child.)  On the other hand, what do you think of the novel's conception of Heaven?

[beautifulmess]

Yes.  I thought the depiction of bereavement was the most gripping part of the book--messy and painful and funny and very convincing.  (I can only imagine how it would read to someone who has a child.)  On the other hand, what do you think of the novel's conception of Heaven?

The conception of Heaven was my biggest issue with the book. In Susie's Heaven, there was such a strong longing to return to earth sometimes, and in the real, true Heaven I don't believe there will be such a thing at all. It was sad to know that in the book's version of Heaven there was still grief, however small it may have been at times. The one thing I did sort of enjoy about the book's view of Heaven was that every person's heaven was slightly different, bent towards that person's particular passions and loves. But in reality, the things we loved so much on earth won't compare to the splendor and glory of what the real Heaven holds.  

[Vlad!]

Though I haven't read the book, I do want to risk de-railing the thread by commenting on the heaven thing. Although we will have new bodies which may or may not feel emotions the same way, I think that unless both our memories and our fundamental being are some how drastically altered we will still be capable of the entire dynamic range of feeling. I don't think that heaven will be some sort of artificially-induced constant euphoria like a chemical high; that would just be another form of slavery or enthrallment. Much like how on this earth we are given the choice of whether to sin or not, in heaven I believe we will be given the choice of whether to be happy or not. It's just a tribute to God's awesomeness that we will be happy most of the time.

[glatisant]

But in reality, the things we loved so much on earth won't compare to the splendor and glory of what the real Heaven holds.

It was really striking to me how "this-worldly" the novel was.  What happens to Suzie's family is so much more gripping than anything that transpires in Heaven.

The saddest thing to me was that she couldn't really change--her Heaven expands and broadens, and it's a lovely pastoral vision of an idealized earth, but it's still an extension of who she was on earth, rather than a transformation.  There's certainly nothing of "further up and further in" that's in Lewis's work.