Recently, I happened to come across an unforgettable book called The Lovely Bones that changed my entire perspective on life and death. The Lovely Bones is quite an old book written by Alice Sebold in 2002, which depicts an American family in the 1970s/1980s. So, this book is basically about a girl called Susie who was killed by her neighbor and was able to watch how her family and friends got on with their lives from the vantage point of heaven.
When I first started reading The Lovely Bones, I didn’t have much interest in the silly-sounding book and only read it because I had to (Yeah, I know; the name sounds like a cartoon title for a four-year-old). However, as I ventured deeper into the world conjured by Sebold, I found that The Lovely Bones actually sports some pretty unique and thought-provoking ideas about life in general.
One of the first things that caught my attention about The Lovely Bones is that the book is all about seeing the world through someone who has passed on. Now, I know there are a lot of books describing the afterlife, but the people in those books usually just pass on and don’t linger around much. The Lovely Bones is the first book in my reading collection that involves relationships between the world of the living and that of the dead, and it really creeped me out. Just imagine your great-great-great-great-grandmother up in heaven pointing a finger disapprovingly at you and complaining: ‘Why is this one playing video games instead of studying?’
However, the intimate relationship between life and death in The Lovely Bones also got me thinking: What if there really could be something to the idea of having an afterlife? After all, numerous people who was clinically dead and had near death experiences have been documented to seeing themselves leave their body and observe the activity around them with perfect precision.
If the myths about a world after death are real, then isn’t living in a world after death the same as living on earth? In The Lovely Bones, Susie could watch and even affect things on earth, and I think that by describing connections between heaven and earth, Sebold was really trying to tell us that life and death are really the same kind of thing.
But then, how would we know if our life is what we believe them to be? Maybe to people in another world, our world is just another version of heaven.
Thank you so much for introducing this book. The book sounds very interesting to read. I'd love to read it too!
It's also an amazing movie!
Uly, I didn't know that it's made a film. Thank you for the information.
*...that it was made into a movie. (film is correct, but in the US we tend to say movie)
The movie's amazing! Mark Wahlberg plays the father and Stanley Tucci plays the killer and they're both magnificent. I can't recall the actress's name who plays the little girl but she's spectacular too. You'll want to watch it more than once.
Thank you for the correction. I'd love to read the book first because usually books are better than movies. Then, I'd love to see the movie as well. Thank you for the info as well.