Salmon, like the fish

The Lovely Bones

By Alice Sebold

I've read this particular book 3 times--and only the first time was by choice.  It's not my favorite book, but I have to admit that every time I read it I discover something new I never noticed before.  I also cry each time I read it, even though I know what happens almost by heart.  The writing is wonderful, so instead of trying to describe it, I'll just give you some quotes and set you on your way.  

Also, if you're looking for another good read, Sebold's first book, Lucky, is, in my opinion, much better than this one.  Her newest book, The Almost Moon, is not, but it's worth a read anyways.  

"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections--sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent--that happened after I was gone.  And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it.  The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future.  The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life." (320)

"Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand.  The word my grandfather uses is comfort.

So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything.  Give no story.  Make no claim.  Where you can live at the edge of your skin as long as you wish.  This wide wide Heaven is about as flathead nails and the soft down of new leaves, wild roller coaster rides and escaped marbles that fall then hang then take you somewhere you could never have imagined in your small-heaven dreams." (325)

"And in a small house five miles away was a man who held my mud-encrusted charm bracelet out to his wife.  

'Look what I found at the old industrial park,' he said.  'A construction guy said they were bulldozing the whole lot.  They're afraid of sink holes like that one that swallowed the cars.'

His wife poured him some water from the sink as he fingered the tiny bike and the ballet shoe, the flower basket and the thimble.  He held out the muddy bracelet as she set down his glass. 

'This little girl's grown up by now,' she said.

Almost.  Not quite.

I wish you all a long and happy life." (328)