The Lovely Bones Essay

The Lovely Bones, written and published in 2002 by Alice Sebold, is a novel following the unfortunate rape and murder of a young girl as she narrates her story from the heavens. With an unpleasant topic such as this one, several people have questioned Sebold as to why she wrote the book in the first place. In reply, she told them she had chosen to write about such a gruesome topic because it was much like an experience she lived through herself, and to write about such trauma was to bring awareness to a world where everything was sugar-coated. The novel itself is a work of high literary merit that includes a touch of personal background, qualitative character development, symbolic themes, unique elements, descriptive writing style, and organized structure.
Alice Sebold was born on September 6, 1963, in Madison, Wisconsin. She was the daughter of two ¨academic parents,¨ and notably grew up in a ¨household dominated by dysfunction¨ (Alice Sebold Biography). Her mother was a weak woman who reportedly suffered from both panic attacks and anxiety. These two unfortunate disabilities only served to fuel the woman 's alcoholic tendencies, which left both Sebold and her older sister Mary to

However, it 's an uplifting novel despite it 's features of both rape and murder. The novel´s realism allows people of all backgrounds to be able to sympathize and understand the situation of losing someone close to them by unfortunate means. What Alice Sebold wants to convey to her readers is that although terrible situations can present themselves randomly, life goes on. It 's a choice one has to decide in order to learn to live with their past and live with themselves. Even the author herself had experienced a very similar encounter, yet she was determined to keep going; as a result, she has proven that there is light even in the darkest of