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The Lovely Bones

post #1 of 15
12/2/09 at 2:06pm
Thread Starter 
Cont. from the prerelease thread-

The thing of it is, the book sets up such an elaborate afterlife that merely killing Mr. Harvey is no comeuppance at all. He would just move on to his next stage as every person in world does. It's almost as though he literally gets away with murder because he is never brought to justice in the world of the living.

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Well does the book even address the issue of punishment or Hell? I don't remember. I mean, Susie was in "her Heaven" but I don't know if that implies everyone goes to "their Heaven".

I suppose there's some narrative irony to draw from the connection--Mr. Harvey gets away with "the perfect murder", and so does Susie?--but I think you're just supposed to wonder a little whether it was coincidental. But yeah, I still think it's trite to read it as directly caused and it raises the question, why did she wait so long to go Final Destination on his ass?
I assumed he would go to his own private Hell. But of course he would get there eventually with or without any icicle intervention.
If we are to assume Suzie kills Harvey it is for no effective reason (other than to satiate the reader's bloodlust). Her loved ones know nothing about it. If anything, it prevents them from ever getting any sense of justice/vengeance/closure.
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post #2 of 15
12/2/09 at 2:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by BobClark View Post
If we are to assume Suzie kills Harvey it is for no effective reason (other than to satiate the reader's bloodlust). Her loved ones know nothing about it. If anything, it prevents them from ever getting any sense of justice/vengeance/closure.
Agreed 100%. If anything, having Suzie kill Harvey runs counter-intuitive to the novel's theme of healing and learning to let go.
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post #3 of 15
12/2/09 at 2:23pm
There are a couple reasons Mr. Harvey needed to die outside of comeuppance. The first was simply that he was a fucking menace. The icicle of doom gets him just as he's stalking his next victim. The second, being perhaps more esoteric, is that in a book about people in pain craving release, he's got more than anyone. He needs to die for himself, and presumably he can sort through his shit in a less dangerous and more direct way in the afterlife.

I half expected Jackson to throw in a personal hell for him a la The Frighteners. Glad he stopped short of that.

Can you alter the title to indicate there's tons of book spoilers in here?
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post #4 of 15
12/2/09 at 2:37pm
Heh, yeah the pre-release thread was starting to read like a redacted CIA document.

The theme of the book is obviously about letting go. But an icicle is mentioned as a "perfect murder weapon" earlier in the book. I don't think it's more than a little narrative flourish myself, but maybe it is meant as at least a little karmic balance from the spiritual plane, if not explicitly willed by Susie.
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post #5 of 15
12/2/09 at 2:41pm
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Originally Posted by Count Floyd View Post
I don't think it's more than a little narrative flourish myself, but maybe it is meant as at least a little karmic balance from the spiritual plane, if not explicitly willed by Susie.
Yes, I agree with this. It's a random act of kharmic balancing. Nothing more and nothing less.
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post #6 of 15
12/2/09 at 3:06pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arjen Rudd View Post

Can you alter the title to indicate there's tons of book spoilers in here?
I don't think I have that power.

Wasn't Harvey losing his skills by then? The girl he tried to get with pegged him as a creep immediately and shut him down, right? The icicle was pretty much insult to injury at that point.
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post #7 of 15
12/2/09 at 3:19pm
Ha! Maybe it was Satan pulling the plug on the Mr. Harvey project. "I'm sorry, but you're just not getting the job done these days." *thwck*
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post #8 of 15
12/2/09 at 4:36pm
Thread Starter 
He turned into the Willy Loman of sexual predators. And all because of that meddling kid!
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post #9 of 15
12/2/09 at 5:10pm
"A.. B... K. Always Be Killing. ALWAYS. BE. KILLING."
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post #10 of 15
12/7/09 at 5:45am
So is Susie's version of Heaven being stuck with all the girls Harvey killed? That seems shitty. This is at least the ending of the movie, I'm assuming it's the same in the book.
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post #11 of 15
12/7/09 at 6:27am
No. It's mentioned briefly towards the end, though. The book ends with the dead girl getting her swerve on with the Indian kid through the telepathic goth woman. So weird. And then there's an epilogue of seeing the family go on without her, Lindsay getting proposed to, her having a kid, the end.
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post #12 of 15
12/7/09 at 10:34am
I think it was a mistake to read this and the Time Travellers Wife in succession. I ended up being disappointed in both stories.
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post #13 of 15
12/7/09 at 11:37am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by devincf View Post
So is Susie's version of Heaven being stuck with all the girls Harvey killed? That seems shitty. This is at least the ending of the movie, I'm assuming it's the same in the book.
No, she hangs with them for awhile and moves along her way through Heaven.

edit: What Ali said plus icicle ambiguity.
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post #14 of 15
12/10/09 at 2:29am
I just finally got around to reading this myself given the film release.

I've got to say the ending felt to me like such a cop-out from a non-book-world perspective given that it's made pretty clear that catching Harvey would bring closure to a whole hell of a lot of people, not just the Salmon family and Inspector Len. But, oh no, Susie's moved on! Can't take 5 seconds out of getting it on with Ray to let him know how to find Harvey, given that he was in town fairly close by! Out of the question!/sarcasm

I mean it's heavily implied the Connecticut murder victim was of a relatively recent provenance (for want of a better word!). And am I correct in recalling that the "random" icicle did Harvey in some years later after the Ray/Ruth/Susie bed-encounter? So who knows who else he could have killed in the meantime before Harvey loses his abilities, so to speak. (Actually I tend to look at it more as teenagers of Susie's age just becoming a lot savvier as the world becomes more overtly savage over time, than Harvey losing his touch). It just made no sense to me to hang it (the resolution) around the laurel of people moving on and letting go at that particular point. Susie even tries to telephone Buckley FFS! That whole "possession" sequence just soured me on the book.
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post #15 of 15
12/11/09 at 4:53pm
I dunno, I think one of the main themes from the book is that you're going to have to accept certain things in life and figure out how to move on despite those things. Suzie's family has to accept that she is gone. Suzie's mom has to accept that she really did love her daughter in the end despite being resentful towards having her. The cop needs to learn how to get past his wife killing herself, etc.

The idea that they didn't end up catching the killer ties into that, and I am pretty sure this is deliberate given how the author steadfastly avoids letting any of them get closure the easy way (i.e. they catch the killer and he gets electrocuted). If she had followed through on that conviction, then his fate would have remained vague throughout the novel. Instead, killing him off seemed cheap to me.

I read this book over the summer and all I can remember thinking was "this movie is un-filmable, no one is going to be happy with a child killer getting away with the crime"
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