Alice Sebold Lovely Bones USA 1st Edition 1st Print-Signed H/B Best Wishes
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Lovely Book in Mylar cover.
The spirit of fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon describes her murder, her surprise at her new home in heaven, and her witness to her family`s grief, efforts to find the killer, and attempts to come to terms with what has happened. Once in a generation a novel comes along that taps a vein of universal human experience, resonating with readers of all ages. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. Â Â Â Â So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on eath continue without her - her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling.
    Out of unspeakable traged and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joyA stunning achievement. " -The New Yorker"Deeply affecting. A keenly observed portrait of familial love and how it endures and changes over time. " -New York Times"A triumphant novel.
" -Time"Destined to become a classic in the vein of To Kill a Mockingbird. " -Anna Quindlen"A novel that is painfully fine and accomplished.
" -Los Angeles Times"The Lovely Bones seems to be saying there are more important things in life on earth than retribution. On her way home from school on a snowy December day, 14-year-old Susie Salmon is lured into a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case.As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams", where there were no teachers... We never had to go inside except for art class... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue. The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story.
Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow". Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters.
Sebold orchestrates a big finish and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings.