The Lovely Bones: A Novel

People have asked me what I thought of Alice Sebold's 2002 novel, and until now I have only been able to say that I hadn't read it.

I finished it over Memorial Day weekend. So many emotions... terror, loss, chaos, distance - and a whole rethinking of what heaven means to me.

When 14 year old Susie disappears, we discover what happened to her becasue she narrates it from heaven - a "place" that is different for everyone. She even has an intake counselor who was also murdered...

Susie tells the story of her rape, murder and how her body was cut up and disposed of by her murderer. From above, and then in a chapter reminiscent of the film Ghost, Susie  inhabits the body of a friend, to see what making love us like, before she goes to heaven forever.

Truth be told, I liked Thornton Wilder's 1938 play Our Town better because it was about death and loss, from the side of life and afterlife. It too offered an opportunity to examine what the next life might be like.

The Lovely Bones is very contemporary and we are spared no details as the family tries to adjust, as the case grows cold, of the father's unrelenting search for his daughter's murderer.

I just don't think that Susie's heaven does it for me, though the struggle of the family seems realistic and concludes in a mostly satisfying way. Like The Sixth Sense, souls who in life were murdered or put to death for no reason, are in a "place" until someone redeems them - a place of waiting for justice. The book ends, but there is no real sense of justice for Susie because the crime is never really solved.

What will heaven be like? "In my Father's house there are many mansions," Jesus told us. "If it were not so, I would not have told you."

Whatever these mansions might be like is no matter, as long as we can linger in the presence of transcendent, eternal love. The Lovely Bones did not quite do it for me. Is this the heaven of citizens of the West in the 21st century? I hope for more.

 

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is the first in a series about a detective agency in Botswana founded by Precious Ramotswe. She is a woman of about forty of "traditional" size, widowed and alone. Her beloved father has died and with her inheritance has bought a new home an office and decided to be a private detective.

She hires a secretary because you need one to be respectable.

Mma. Ramotswe is fortunate because she has hired a woman who is intelligent and ambitious to be a good secretary. Soon they have their first case. With wisdom and common sense and a book about how to be a detective, Mma. Ramotswe and her secretary begin their careers.

Tears of the Giraffe and Morality for Beautiful Girls are the second and third volumes of this absolutely charming and engaging series of books. The author is Alexander McCall Smith "a professor of medical law at Edinburgh University. He was born in what is now Zimbabwe and taught law at the Unviersity of Botswana."

I enjoyed these easy reads because they are filled with interesting characters, straight talking, humor, heart and humanity - my recipe for good books and good movies. I think adolescent girls would like them, too.

Even if a man wrote them!