The Lovely Bones is a fictional novel following the afterlife of a young girl who is raped and murdered in her neighborhood. The murder, occurring within the first chapter of the book, allows the main character (Susie Salmon) to narrate the rest. Once dead she arrives in what her younger brother named the “in between” which is the place people go when they are in between their life on earth and their life on Heaven.
She sees the grief that strikes her community directly following her death. A boy who had been in love with Susie regretted so badly that he had only ever kissed her once. An acquaintance in high school felt as though she had a personal connection to the dead, which would reveal itself to be true later on. Her younger sister begins to wear makeup and avoid mirrors for she resembles Susie. Her father becomes ruled by the grief he feels after her death and becomes obsessed with finding her murderer, hurting his marriage, his family, and himself in the process. Her mother becomes overwhelmed with this tragedy and acts out by partaking in an affair. Following this secret affair, her mother abandons the rest of her family to work at a winery in California. Here she denies the existence of Susie, telling her coworkers that she has only two children up North, not three.
This also follows the great conflict Susie has within herself. In order to reach Heaven she must stop wishing to be back on earth. She has to accept what happened to her, no matter how vile and unfair the events that took place were. She must no longer wonder or worry about what will happen to her friends, her family, and her killer. Just like those she left behind on Earth, she must accept the tragedy for what it is and move on, always carrying a part of it with her but no longer seeking answers. I could almost relate it to the novel I read for my first schema, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, for similar themes regarding tragedy, grief, and healing. In both novels an unspeakable event occurs, changing the lives of everyone around them in very different ways. Both main characters (Susie Salmon and Oskar Schell) must figure out a way to accept this. Oskar has to live in a world without his father after 9/11 and Susie must leave her family on earth following her murder.
These may seem like events that would be difficult to relate to considering the weight of each occurrence, but the storyline and the writing make it easy for anyone who has dealt with loss. The most pressing question when it comes to death is very prevalent in both instances and that is: why do terrible things happen? More relevant in these stories, why do terrible things happen to good people? The answer, I have come to find, is that there is no reason, or at least there is no good reason for horrific things to happen to good people. To try to make sense of why Susie Salmon was raped and murdered would drive anyone insane, and that is because there is no sense to make of it. There is no reason that a 15 year old had to endure such violence and mortification. There is no reason that 9 year old Oskar Schell’s father was in the Twin Towers on 9/11. The best we can do is to do whatever we can to move on with those around us, whomever that might be.