The Lovely Bones

Halaman ini berisi artikel tentang novel. Untuk film 2009, lihat The Lovely Bones (film).

The Lovely Bones adalah novel 2002 oleh Alice Sebold. Mengisahkan tentang seorang gadis remaja yang, setelah diperkosa dan dibunuh, menonton dari Surga pribadinya selayaknya keluarga dan teman berjuang untuk beranjak dari kehidupan mereka sementara dia datang untuk berdamai dengan kematian sendiri. Novel ini menerima banyak pujian dan langsung menjadi buku terlaris.. Adaptasi film dari novel ini, disutradarai oleh Peter Jackson yang secara pribadi memiliki hak, dirilis di bioskop Amerika pada 15 Januari 2010, dan di Inggris pada 15 Februari 2010.

The Lovely Bones

Pengarang	Alice Sebold
Negara	Amerika Serikat
Bahasa	Inggris
Genre	Novel
Penerbit	Little, Brown
Tanggal terbit	2002
Jenis media	Print (hardback and paperback); audio book
Halaman	328 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-316-66634-3
OCLC	48495099
Desimal Dewey	813/.6 21
LCC	PS3619.E26 L68 2002

Judul

Judul novel diambil dari kutipan pada akhir cerita, saat Susie mengenang teman-temannya semasa hidup dan ketegaran keluarganya pasca kematiannya:

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 my death brought were primarily that 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 lifeless body had been my life.

Plot

Cerita diawali di Norristown, Pennsylvania tahun 1973. Susie Salmon, 14 tahun, pulang sekolah dan mengambil jalan pintas menuju rumahnya seperti biasa melewati ladang jagung. George Harvey, 36 tahun, tetangga yang tinggal sendirian dan membuat rumah boneka untuk nafkah hidup, membujuk Susie untuk melihat sebuah ruangan bawah tanah yang baru saja dia gali di ladang jagung. Sekali Susie masuk, George memperkosa dan membunuhnya, memutilasi tubuhnya, menaruh mayatnya dalam tempat penyimpanan (sejenis brankas besar) yang dikubur dalam lubang pembuangan. Arwah Susie melarikan diri ke surga pribadinya.

Keluarga Salmon pada awalnya menolak untuk percaya bahwa Susie sudah mati, sampai potongan siku Susie ditemukan anjing tetangga. Polisi bicara pada George Harvey, menyadari pria itu aneh tapi tak punya alasan mencurigainya. Ayah Susie, Jack, mulai mencurigai Harvey. Putri sentimennya yang masih hidup, Lindsey, juga mencurigai Harvey. Jack mengambil cuti panjang dari pekerjaan.

Kemudian, Len Fenerman, detektif yang ditugaskan untuk kasus ini, memberitahu Keluarga Salmon bahwa polisi telah kehabisan semua petunjuk dan menghentikan penyelidikan. Malam itu di ruang kerjanya, Jack melihat ke luar jendela dan melihat cahaya senter di ladang jagung. Mengira bahwa itu Harvey sedang memusnahkan lebih banyak bukti, Jack keluar rumah untuk menghadapinya, bersenjatakan tongkat baseball. Sosok itu bukan Harvey, tapi Clarissa, teman baik Susie yang pacaran dengan Brian, salah satu teman sekelas Susie. Seakan Susie menonton film horor dari surga, Brian—yang pergi menemui Clarissa di ladang jagung—hampir membunuh Jack, dan Clarissa mematahkan lutut Jack. Sementara Jack dalam masa penyembuhan dari operasi lutut, ibu Susie, Abigail, mulai membohongi Jack dan selingkuh dengan Fenerman

Mencoba untuk membantu ayahnya membuktikan kecurigaannya, Lindsey menyelinap ke rumah Harvey dan menemukan diagram ruangan bawah tanah itu, tetapi terpaksa meninggalkannya ketika Harvey kembali masuk rumah secara tak terduga. Polisi tidak menahan Harvey, yang memungkinkan dia untuk melarikan diri dari Norristown. Kemudian, bukti ditemukan yang menghubungkan Harvey dengan pembunuhan Susie, yang juga dilakukannya pada gadis-gadis lain. Sementara itu, Susie bertemu korban Harvey lainnya dalam surga dan melihat ke masa kecil mereka yang traumatis.

Abigail meninggalkan Jack, dan akhirnya bekerja pada perkebunan anggur di California. Ibunya, Nenek Lynn, pindah ke rumah keluarga Salmons untuk merawat Buckley dan Lindsey. Delapan tahun kemudian, Lindsey dan pacarnya, Samuel Heckler, bertunangan setelah menyelesaikan kuliah, menemukan sebuah rumah tua di hutan yang dimiliki oleh ayah teman sekelasnya, memutuskan untuk memperbaikinya dan tinggal di sana. Beberapa saat setelah perayaan, sementara berdebat dengan putranya Buckley, Jack menderita serangan jantung. Keadaan darurat membuat Abigail kembali dari California, namun kembalinya dia membuat Buckley memarahinya karena kepahitan berlama-lama dan meninggalkan keluarga untuk sebagian besar masa kecilnya.

Sementara itu, Harvey kembali ke Norristown, yang telah menjadi lebih berkembang. dia mengeksplorasi lingkungan lamanya dan pemberitahuan bahwa wilayah sekolah sedang diperluas ke ladang jagung tempat dia membunuh Susie. Dia pergi ke lubang pembuangan di mana mayat Susie berada dan di mana Ruth Connors dan Ray Singh berdiri. Ruth, Susie's former classmate who had felt Susie's spirit rush past her immediately after she was murdered, senses the women Harvey has killed and is physically overcome. Susie, watching from heaven, is also overwhelmed with emotion and feels how she and Ruth transcend their present existence, and the two girls exchange positions: Susie, her spirit now in Ruth's body, connects with Ray, who had a crush on Susie in school, and had made plans to go out with her a few days before the murder. Ray senses Susie's presence, and is stunned by the fact that Susie is briefly back with him. The two make love as Susie has longed to do after witnessing her sister and Samuel. Afterwards, Susie returns to heaven.

Susie moves on into another, larger part of heaven, occasionally watching earthbound events. Lindsey and Samuel have a daughter together named Abigail Suzanne. While stalking a young woman in New Hampshire, Harvey is hit on the shoulder by an icicle and falls to his death down a snow-covered slope. At the end of the novel, Susie's charm bracelet is found by a Norristown couple who don't realize its significance, and Susie closes the story by wishing the reader "a long and happy life".

Characters

• Susie Salmon, a 14-year-old girl with reddish brown hair and pale white skin, who is murdered in the first chapter. She narrates the novel from Heaven, witnessing the events on earth and experiencing hopes and longings for the everyday things she can no longer do.
• Jack Salmon, her father, who works for an insurance agency in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. After Susie's death, he is consumed with guilt at having failed to save her.
• Abigail Salmon, her mother, whose growing family responsibilities frustrate her youthful dreams. After her daughter's death, she leaves her husband and moves to California, but returns years later.
• Lindsey Salmon, Susie's sister, is one year younger than she is. She tries to help her father investigate Harvey.
• Buckley Salmon, Susie's brother, is 10 years younger than she is. His unplanned birth forced Abigail to cancel her plans for a teaching career. He sometimes sees Susie while she watches him in her heaven.
• Grandma Lynn, Abigail's mother, an eccentric alcoholic who comes to live with the Salmons when her son-in-law asks her to help Abigail cope with Susie's death. After Abigail leaves, she helps raise her grandchildren.
• George Harvey, the Salmons' neighbor. A serial killer of young girls, he murders Susie and goes unpunished, even though the Salmons come to suspect him. He eventually leaves Norristown to escape the investigation, and continues killing as he moves across the country. Years later, he dies in an accident while stalking a potential victim. Throughout the novel Susie refers to him as Mr. Harvey, the name she had addressed him by in life.
• Ruth Connors, a girl Susie went to school with, whom Susie's spirit touches as she leaves the earth. She becomes fascinated with Susie, despite having barely known her while she was alive, and begins writing about seeing visions of the dead.
• Ray Singh, a boy from India, (via England), the first and only boy to kiss Susie, who later becomes Ruth's friend. He is first suspected by the police of murdering Susie, but he later proves his alibi. He is the one Susie spends her short time on earth with that she is granted years after her death.
• Ruana Singh, Ray's mother, with whom Abigail Salmon sometimes smokes cigarettes.
• Samuel Heckler, Lindsey's boyfriend and later her husband.
• Hal Heckler, Sam's older brother who runs a motorcycle repair shop.
• Len Fenerman, the police detective in charge of investigating Susie's death. His wife commits suicide some time before the events of the novel take place and he later has an affair with Abigail.
• Clarissa, Susie's best friend. explains that she admired Clarissa because she was always allowed to do things Susie was not, like wear platform shoes and smoke.
• Brian, Clarissa's boyfriend. He sees Jack Salmon with a bat and a distraught Clarissa as a victim and takes the bat and beats up Jack, he ends up breaking Jack Salmon's knee.
• Holly, Susie's best friend in heaven. While the text does not say so explicitly, it is implied she is Vietnamese American. She has no accent, and took her name from Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
• Franny, a middle aged woman who worked as a social worker before being shot. She becomes Susie and Holly's mentor in their Heaven.
• Mr. Dewitt, the boy's soccer coach at school. Mr. Dewitt encourages Lindsey, a successful athlete, to try out for his team.
• Mrs. Dewitt, Mr. Dewitt's wife, an English teacher at Susie's school. She teaches both Lindsey and Susie.
• Holiday, Susie's dog.

Commercial and critical reception

Alice Sebold in 2007

Sebold's novel was a surprise success when it was first published, mainly because it was written by a young author known only for one other book. In addition, the plot and narrative device are unusual and unconventional. It would have been considered a success by Little, Brown and Company had it sold 20,000 copies, but it ultimately sold over a million and remained on the New York Times hardback bestseller list for over a year. Some of that could have been attributed to adroit marketing. Prior to its June publication, an excerpt was run in Seventeen. Shortly afterwards, ABC's Good Morning America chose it for its book club. The book became a popular summer read and a runaway success, with much of its sales subsequently attributed to word of mouth.

Critics also helped the novel's success by being generally positive, many noting that the story had more promise than the idea of a brutally murdered teenage girl going to heaven and following her family and friends as they get on with their lives would have suggested. "This is a high-wire act for a first novelist, and Alice Sebold maintains almost perfect balance", wrote Katherine Bouton in The New York Times Book Review.

The novel also sold well in other English-speaking countries, though reviews were not as glowing. While admitting the novel "has its very fine moments", The Guardian's Ali Smith ultimately said, "The Lovely Bones is so keen in the end to comfort us and make safe its world that, however well-meaning, it avoids its own ramifications". Her Observer colleague Philip Hensher was more blunt, conceding that the novel was "very readable" but "ultimately it seems like a slick, overpoweringly saccharine and unfeeling exercise in sentiment and whimsy".

Depiction of Heaven

Because Susie's character is narrating the story from her own personal heaven, there are some questions over the depiction of the afterlife.

Some readers with a Fundamentalist Christian perspective faulted Susie's heaven for being utterly devoid of any apparent religious aspect. "It's a very God-free heaven, with no suggestion that anyone has been judged, or found wanting," Hensher stated.

Several faiths including Swedenborgianism and Spiritualism, believing that the soul continues to learn and mature after death, subscribe to the idea of the afterlife being organized into stages through which souls progress. Theosophical writers speculate on a "heaven world" where the newly dead orient themselves in an illusion of their perfect earthly desires before continuing on to the real Heaven as Susie does.

Sebold, who was raised Episcopalian, intended the heaven to be simplistic in design: "To me, the idea of heaven would give you certain pleasures, certain joys — but it's very important to have an intellectual understanding of why you want those things. It's also about discovery, and being able to come to the conclusions that elude you in life. So it's from the most simplistic things — Susie wants a duplex — to larger things, like being able to understand why her mother was always slightly distant from her."

Furthermore, Sebold has stated that the book is not intended to be religious, "but if people want to take things and interpret them, then I can't do anything about that. It is a book that has faith and hope and giant universal themes in it, but it's not meant to be, 'This is the way you should look at the afterlife'".

Film adaptation

Artikel utama: The Lovely Bones (film)

Director Peter Jackson secured the book's film rights. In a 2005 interview, he stated the reader has "an experience when you read the book that is unlike any other. I don't want the tone or the mood to be different or lost in the film." In the same interview, regarding Susie's heaven, he said the movie version would endeavor to make it appear "somehow ethereal and emotional, but it can't be hokey". The film stars Mark Wahlberg as Jack Salmon, Stanley Tucci as George Harvey, Rachel Weisz as Abigail Salmon, Saoirse Ronan as Susie, Susan Sarandon as Susie's grandmother, Lynn and Rose McIver as Lindsey Salmon.

The film opened to a limited release in three U.S. theaters on December 11, 2009. It received international and wide release on January 15, 2010. It met with mixed reviews, but nonetheless garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor (Tucci).

External links

• The Lovely Bones Reading Group Guide
• A Dark First Novel Suddenly Soars to the Top in The New York Times
• Full summary of The Lovely Bones