Lovely Bones...Read It.

I just finished reading the Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I'm still having a little trouble putting into words exactly how the book made me feel.I'll start off by saying, as I did in my post before, that I know that it's lame to read a book that has just come out as a movie...but I couldn't help it this time. I want to see the movie, but I wanted to read the book first, and that was that.

Going into the book, I sort of knew the premise, but other that that I really didn't know anything about it. I assumed that since it being made into a movie (even if it was a Peter Jackson movie) and because it was a New York Times bestseller that it would be a sort of run of the mill pulp-fiction-y novel written about as well as a John Grisham or Dan Brown book (now I'm not knocking Grisham or Brown really, but their books are what they are...vacation reading...enjoyable brain candy...Oh, come on! You know what I mean). What I discovered after just the first chapter of the Lovely Bones was that I had greatly underestimated this novel.

What Alice Sebold created with the Lovely Bones is a work of literature, not just a novel. What happened after the book was published was somehting that I consider to be a pretty rare phenomenon. The public ate it up. For once the masses were consuming what is actually a pretty amazing, unique and well written work of fiction.

I think that I've decided on the best way to sum up this book, and that is not to say that it's a tear-jerker (although it is that too, and I challenge you to make it through the whole thing without shedding a tear or two), but rather, that this book made my heart hurt. At times throughout the book it was so sad that my heart ached, and at others it was so hopeful that I felt my heart swell until it felt like it would burst (Grinch style...y'know heart growing ten sizes?...Everyone loves a Dr. Seuss reference).

So, I've said what I had to say on the topic of the Lovely Bones. I hope that if you've not yet read it that you'll give it a go. It's definitely worth the read.

Now, to finish Bone. Then go on to attack the rest of the neglected pile of books in my "to read" pile.