The Lovely Bones

This was a beautifully written story. It's technically a "ghost" story, as it is narrated by a child who's been murdered and is now, in a sense, haunting her family. But unlike less literary ghost stories, the purpose of the haunting is as much a means of meditating on loss and grief as it is the ghost's attempt to help her family solve her murder (althoug there is a bit of that.) As I said, the writing is great. The characters are richly drawn. I was reluctant to read a novel about a child murder, but had heard so many good things about it I finally decided to pick it up and am glad I did. The only reason I didn't rate this 5 stars is that I didn't like some of the last scenes in the book - in particular the way that the main character decides to resolve her own missed life opportunities struck me as bizarre and somehow not in keeping with the spirit of the book. Hopefully without spoiling the ending, I'll just say that the decision to have a girl who was raped and murdered then essentially "violate" the body of a friend for sexual purposes was really unsettling for me (and not in a good "ghost story" unsetting kind of way.) I htink my reaction to the ending is in part because in the past 20 years we've started talking about consent differenly. if the ending would have come out differently. The author clearly didn't perceive the ghost's decision to possess another persons' body as a violation, and I think the intent of the scene was to feel redemptive. I suspect if this book had been written this year instead of 2002, but I guess that's true for a lot a books. Overally, a great read if you have the stomach for some not overly graphic, but still clearly depicted scenes of sexual assault and violence.