Review: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I’d heard it was a good book, but didn’t know what it was about, and I nearly put it away after I’d started it. I’m a mom, I don’t like stories about child abuse, child rape, or child murder. But I buckled in and let it take me somewhere scary inside me, and made me deal with some stuff I really did not want to think about. And I am better for it. In one of his books on writing, Noah Lukeman talks about “transcendent fiction”, stories that change the reader. This is transcendent fiction. I am a better person for having read this book. If you get a chance to hear Mrs. Sebold talk about the book and her own experience, listen carefully. As a side note, even though I loved this book, I have no intention of reading the follow-up. One of the best of my '07 reads.