The Lovely Bones

Author	Alice Sebold
Cover artist	Yoori Kim (design); Daniel Lee (photo-illustration)
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Little, Brown
Publication date	2002
Media type	Print (Hardback and Paperback); audio book
Pages	328 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-316-66634-3

The Lovely Bones is a 2002 novel by Alice Sebold. It is the story of a teenage girl who, after being brutally raped and murdered, watches from heaven as her family and friends go on with their lives, while she herself comes to terms with her own death. The novel received a large amount of critical praise and became an instant bestseller. The Lovely Bones is an upcoming film adaptation of the 2002 novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. ... Download high resolution version (551x843, 80 KB)I scanned my copy of the hardback cover on March 20, 2005 This image is a book cover. ... Alice Seebold (b. ... For other uses, see Country (disambiguation). ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... This article is about the literary concept. ... A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. ... A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) book is bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth or heavy paper) and a stitched spine. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Cassette recording of Patrick OBrians The Mauritius Command An audio book is a recording of the contents of a book read aloud. ... ISBN redirects here. ... Alice Seebold (b. ... For other uses, see Heaven (disambiguation). ...

A film adaptation of the novel is currently in production and is being directed by Peter Jackson, who personally purchased the rights. The Lovely Bones is an upcoming film adaptation of the 2002 novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. ... For other persons named Peter Jackson, see Peter Jackson (disambiguation). ...

Plot introduction

In 1973, a 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon is raped, murdered, and dismembered by a neighbor. Over the next few years she watches from a personalized heaven as her family and friends deal with their grief. Dismemberment is the act of cutting, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise removing, the limbs of a living thing. ...

Explanation of the novel's title

The novel's title stems from a line towards the end of the novel, in which Susie ponders her friends' and family's newfound strength after her death:

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 wrought were merely 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 summary

On December 6, 1973 in Norristown, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, Susie Salmon takes a shortcut home from school. She is accosted by a neighbor, George Harvey, a man in his mid-30s who lives alone and builds dollhouses for a living. He persuades her to enter an underground den he has recently built nearby. Once she enters, he rapes and stabs her, cutting her body into parts, and then collapses the den. An elbow, the only part of Susie ever to be found, falls out of his bag as he returns home, disposing of the remaining parts of the body by putting them in a safe and paying someone to drop it in a sinkhole. Meanwhile, Susie's spirit flees toward her personal heaven. is the 340th day of the year (341st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the song by James Blunt, see 1973 (song). ... Norristown is a home rule municipality in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 6 miles (10 km) northwest of the city limits of Philadelphia, on the Schuylkill River. ... For other uses, see Philadelphia (disambiguation) and Philly. ... Devils Hole near Hawthorne, Florida, USA. A sinkhole, also known as a sink, shake hole, swallow hole, swallet, doline or cenote, is a natural depression or hole in the surface topography caused by the removal of soil or bedrock, often both, by water. ...

The Salmon family is at first reluctant to accept that Susie has been killed, but then accedes when Susie's hat and elbow are found. The police who talk to Mr. Harvey find him odd but see no reason to suspect him. Jack, Susie's father, becomes suspicious and later comes to harass the police about Harvey. Susie's sister Lindsey comes to share these suspicions. Jack, consumed with guilt over not having been able to protect his daughter, remains on extended leave from work and increasingly isolates himself at home. Buckley, the youngest child in the family at five, tries to make sense of all this as he starts school.

One day late in the summer a detective named Len Fenerman comes to tell the Salmons that the police have exhausted all leads and are dropping the investigation. That night in his study, Jack looks out the window and sees a flashlight in the cornfield. Believing it to be Harvey returning to destroy evidence, he runs out to confront him with a baseball bat. It turns out to be Susie's best friend, Clarissa, and her boyfriend Brian looking for a place to make out. Brian and Jack struggle and Jack is struck with the bat. As a result he has to have knee replacement surgery. In the wake of this, his wife Abigail begins having an affair with Fenerman, who is a widower. The following summer Abigail leaves her husband, going to her father's old cabin in New Hampshire and then moving to California, taking a job at a winery. As a result her mother, Grandma Lynn, moves into the Salmons' home to help her son-in-law care for Buckley and Lindsey. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Four historically significant baseball bats showcased in the National Baseball Hall of Fames traveling exhibit Baseball As America. ... Knee replacement, or arthroplasty of the knee, is a commonly performed operation done to relieve the pain and disability from rheumatoid arthritis or more often osteoarthritis of the knee. ... Alternate uses: see widow (typesetting). ... Official language(s) English Capital Concord Largest city Manchester Area  Ranked 46th  - Total 9,350 sq mi (24,217 km²)  - Width 68 miles (110 km)  - Length 190 miles (305 km)  - % water 4. ... Official language(s) English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Largest metro area Greater Los Angeles Area  Ranked 3rd  - Total 158,302 sq mi (410,000 km²)  - Width 250 miles (400 km)  - Length 770 miles (1,240 km)  - % water 4. ...

Still suspicious, Lindsey sneaks into Harvey's house and finds a drawing of the pit and is forced to leave when Harvey returns prematurely. Sensing threat, Harvey leaves Norristown as soon as possible and becomes a drifter. A year later the police bulldoze the cornfield and turn up a soda bottle from the night of the murder with Harvey's and Susie's fingerprints, finally making him an official suspect. However, he remains at large. That fall, a hunter in Connecticut discovers the body of another one of Harvey's victims, and one of Susie's charms nearby. In 1981, a detective in Connecticut links the charm to Susie's murder and calls Fenerman. As they uncover further evidence, the police realize that Harvey is a serial killer. Fingerprints can refer to: Human fingerprints Fingerprints, a Leonard Cohen song. ... Official language(s) English Capital Hartford Largest city Bridgeport[3] Largest metro area Hartford Metro Area[2] Area  Ranked 48th  - Total 5,543[4] sq mi (14,356 km²)  - Width 70 miles (113 km)  - Length 110 miles (177 km)  - % water 12. ... Serial killers are individuals who have a history of multiple slayings of victims who were usually unknown to them beforehand. ...

Lindsey and her boyfriend Samuel Heckler become engaged, find an old house in the woods that Ruth's father owns and decide to fix it up and live there. Sometime after the celebration, while arguing with his son, Jack suffers from a heart attack. The emergency prompts Abigail to return from California, but the reunion is tempered by Buckley's lingering bitterness at her for having abandoned him and his father. Heart attack redirects here. ...

Meanwhile, Harvey returns to Norristown, which has become more developed. Having explored his old neighborhood and seen that the school is being expanded into the cornfield where he killed Susie, he drives by the sinkhole where Susie's body is, and where Ruth Connors and Ray Singh are standing. Ruth, an old classmate of Susie's who had felt Susie's spirit go past her after her murder, senses the women Harvey has killed and is overcome, as is Susie watching from heaven, and they exchange positions. Susie, her spirit now in Ruth's body, kisses Ray, who had a crush on Susie in school, and they go to the back room in Hal's bike shop to make love. Afterwards, Susie returns to heaven.

She moves onto the larger heaven, still watching earthbound events from time to time. She sees her sister's newborn baby girl, who is named Abigail Suzanne. One day she spies Harvey getting off a Greyhound bus at a diner in New Hampshire in early spring. Behind the diner he sees a young woman and attempts to speak to her, but she rebuffs him. Susie notices some large icicles hanging from the roof, and after the woman leaves one falls and hits Mr. Harvey on the head, knocking him into a nearby ravine and ultimately killing him. Greyhound Lines is the largest inter-city common carrier of passengers by bus in North America , serving 2,200 destinations in the United States. ... Official language(s) English Capital Concord Largest city Manchester Area  Ranked 46th  - Total 9,350 sq mi (24,217 km²)  - Width 68 miles (110 km)  - Length 190 miles (305 km)  - % water 4. ...

Characters

• Susie Salmon, a 14-year-old girl who is raped, murdered and dismembered in the first chapter, and narrates the novel from heaven.
• Jack Salmon, her father, who works for an insurance agency in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
• Abigail Salmon, her mother, whose growing family frustrated her youthful dreams.
• Lindsey Salmon, Susie's sister, a year younger than she, thought of as the smartest child in the family. She is the only Salmon child whose birth was planned.
• Buckley Salmon, Susie's brother, ten years younger than she. His unplanned birth forced Abigail to cancel her plans for a teaching career. He sometimes sees Susie while she watches him.
• Grandma Lynn, Abigail's mother, who comes to live with her son-in-law and grandchildren after her daughter leaves.
• George Harvey, the Salmons' neighbor, who kills Susie and goes unpunished even though the Salmons come to suspect him, then leaves Norristown to kill again. Throughout the novel she refers to him as Mr. Harvey, the name she had addressed him by in life.
• Ruth Connors, A Lover of Susie's whom her dead spirit touches as she leaves the earth. She becomes fascinated with Susie despite barely having known her in her life, and devotes her life to writing about the visions of the dead she sees.
• Ray Singh, the first and only boy to kiss Susie, and later, becomes Ruth's friend.
• Ruana Singh, Ray's exotic 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, who later has an affair with Abigail.
• Clarissa, Susie's best friend on Earth. Not much else is known about her, except that she has a boyfriend named Brian.
• Holly, Susie's best friend and roommate in heaven. While the text does not say so explicitly, it is implied she is Vietnamese-American. She has no accent, although she did on earth, and took her name from Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Her own life and death are never expanded upon.

• Franny, Susie and Holly's "intake counselor" in heaven.
• Holiday, Susie's dog.

Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss. ... Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania is a small township 30 miles southwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in Delaware County. ... A Vietnamese American (Vietnamese: người Mỹ gốc Việt) is a resident of the United States who is of Vietnamese descent. ... This article is about the 1961 film starring Audrey Hepburn. ...

Origins and inspiration

The novel draws from the author's personal experiences from when she was raped during her freshman year at Syracuse University. In Lucky, Sebold's 1997 memoir of the event and its aftermath, she describes how it transformed her life, especially after learning that the rapist's previous victim had died. After later seeing the rapist on the street, she reported him to the police and eventually testified against him. He was convicted and received the maximum sentence. Crouse College, a 19th-century Romanesque building which houses the universitys visual arts and music programs Syracuse University (SU) is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States the geographic center of the state, about 250 miles northwest of New York City. ... Lucky is a memoir by Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones, published in 1997. ... As a literary genre, a memoir (from the French: mémoire from the Latin memoria, meaning memory) forms a subclass of autobiography, although it is an older form of writing. ... In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. ... In law, a sentence forms the final act of a judge-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function. ...

She began the novel in the early 1990s as an outgrowth of those events. However, she fiercely resists suggestions that it had anything to do with the aftermath of the rape:

Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. ...

Location

In an afterword to the paperback edition, Sebold stated that "the oddness of what we often condescendingly refer to as the suburbs" was also an inspiration. She had lived outside of Philadelphia herself for a time.^[2] Contrary to what is depicted in the book, however, in the 1970s (as well as today) Norristown was a largely urban municipality with few subdivisions. “Suburbia” redirects here. ...

Fairfax Junior High School was inspired by Great Valley High School in Malvern, Pennsylvania, which Sebold attended for a while.^{[citation needed]} Malvern is located approximately five miles west of Valley Forge National Historical Park, an important setting in the book, and ten miles to the south of Susie's purported home in Norristown. Great Valley High School is a high school in eastern Chester County. ... Location of Malvern in relation to Paoli and Chesterbrook Malvern is a borough in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. ... This article is about the National Historical Park. ...

Themes and literary techniques

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007)

The novel is a Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story. Even though Susie is dead, she manages to grow up while in heaven as her tone and perspective as a narrator changes throughout. Image File history File links Emblem-important. ... A Bildungsroman (IPA: /, German: novel of self-cultivation) is a novelistic form which concentrates on the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the protagonist usually from childhood to maturity. ...

Much of the novel concerns itself with grief and how it is, or is not, overcome by Susie's family. It has been suggested that Anticipatory Grief be merged into this article or section. ...

The disintegration of the suburban nuclear family during the 1970s is also present, as Susie's death precipitates a chain of events which results in Abigail feeling trapped by her domestic responsibilities and ultimately leaving her husband. In this respect it is similar not only to the film Ordinary People but to Rick Moody's The Ice Storm, which is also set in the seventies and begins and ends with the tragic death of a family's teenage child. In contrast to that novel, however, references and pop culture allusions to the era are minimal (Watergate, which was unfolding in more and more grim detail in late 1973 and makes a significant part of the background of Moody's work, is never even once mentioned in The Lovely Bones). Sebold chose the earlier time period because media frenzies did not routinely surround the families of missing children then (as Susie points out); it also helps explain why the police are not able to catch Harvey since forensics were less advanced. The term nuclear family developed in the western world to distinguish the family group consisting of parents (usually a father and mother) and their children, from what is known as an extended family. ... This article is about the film. ... Rick Moody (born Hiram Frederick Moody III October 18, 1961 in New York City), is an American novelist and short story writer best known for The Ice Storm (1994), a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973. ... The Ice Storm is a 1994 American novel by Rick Moody. ... Popular culture, or pop culture, is the vernacular (peoples) culture that prevails in a modern society. ... The Watergate building. ... The word forensic (from Latin: forensis - forum) refers to something of, pertaining to, or used in a court of law. ...

Another underlying theme is the increasing development of the suburban Northeast. Many locations are developed during the novel. For example, the field where she was murdered eventually becomes the site of a new wing of her school and Ray laments that every year Norristown is beginning to look more and more like everywhere else. For them, Susie's memory becomes a way of recalling the larger past. Sebold herself said of this: Illustration of the backyards of a surburban neighbourhood Suburbs are inhabited districts located either on the outer rim of a city or outside the official limits of a city (the term varies from country to country), or the outer elements of a conurbation. ... The U.S. Northeast is a region of the United States of America defined by the US Census Bureau. ...

Symbols and motifs

Flowers are often present in the novel and represent the dead's continued presence in the lives of the living. Susie's favorite flower is the daffodil, and they are accordingly left on the site of her death on its anniversary. Later, she and her fellow dead make Buckley's garden grow with a wild mix of geraniums. Species ????? Daffodils are a group of large flowered members of the genus Narcissus. ... Not to be confused with germanium. ...

Snow is also highly important in the novel. It serves to "cover up" what is happening in everyday life and creates a blanket of perfection. This can be applied to the perception of Mr. Harvey in the eyes of the other neighbours (bar Jack Salmon) and the wider blanketing of the way Susie's family respond to her loss.

The narrative frequently focuses on small household objects. Susie describes how her family members surreptitiously remove many of her personal effects from her room, and the charms from her bracelet help link Mr. Harvey to other murders. Susie prays the bracelet will be found and possibly lead investigators to Mr. Harvey, which can be read as an Althusserian "final signifier" — when its lonely hour arrives at the very end of the novel, it can no longer have any impact on its events. Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation: altuË¡seʁ) (October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. ...

Photography is important, too, particularly a picture Susie took of her mother unawares one morning with her Kodak Instamatic, which she later realizes was the only time she saw her mother as a woman and not just her mother. Some time after Abigail leaves her father finds it accidentally and it reminds him of how much he still loves her. Susie wants to be a wildlife photographer when she grows up, and one late chapter is called "Snapshots" instead of being numbered. Photography [fәtɑgrәfi:],[foʊtɑgrәfi:] is the process of recording pictures by means of capturing light on a light-sensitive medium, such as a film or electronic sensor. ... Eastman Kodak Company (NYSE: EK) is a large multinational public company producing photographic equipment. ... The Kodak Instamatic series of inexpensive, easy to load cameras was introduced in 1963, and featured an easy load film cartridge. ...

Omniscient narrator

The Lovely Bones was notable when it was published for its use of an omniscient narrator, a device thought by some to be dead in most contemporary American fiction. Susie, however, complicates this by also being a character in the story, albeit one who is dead. In literature, an omniscient narrator is a narrator who appears to know everything about the story being told, including what all the characters are thinking. ...

Nevertheless, she controls the narrative flow and often speaks to the reader directly, acknowledging that it is a story being told in a book ("Don't think that every person you meet in here is a suspect," she says in the opening paragraphs). In this respect she bears a lot of similarity to the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town, a play explicitly alluded to in the novel which also, in its last act, features a young woman reviewing her small-town life posthumously. Image:Thorntonwilderteeth. ... Our Town by Thornton Wilder Our Town is a three act play by Thornton Wilder which is, perhaps, the most frequently produced play by an American playwright. ...

Commercial and critical reception

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. Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. ... The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ... A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and booktrade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. ...

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 reading and a runaway success, with much of its sales subsequently attributed to word of mouth. Seventeen is an American magazine for teenage girls. ... This article is about the American broadcast network. ... Good Morning America is a weekday morning news show that is broadcast on the ABC television network. ... A book discussion club is a group of people who meet to discuss a book or books that they have read and express their opinions, likes, dislikes, etc. ... For other uses, see Word of mouth (disambiguation). ...

It has been suggested that a story of grief and recovery as it affects not only those left behind but the dead person herself struck just the right note for a nation dealing with the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Current events also benefited the book when the media became captivated by the abduction drama surrounding a Utah teen, Elizabeth Smart (later found alive), and a similar story from Oregon of a man who was found to have buried two local teen girls under a concrete plug in his backyard several years before. A sequential look at United Flight 175 crashing into the south tower of the World Trade Center The September 11, 2001 attacks (often referred to as 9/11—pronounced nine eleven or nine one one) consisted of a series of coordinated terrorist[1] suicide attacks upon the United States, predominantly... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Elizabeth Ann Smart (born 1987) was abducted from her Salt Lake City, Utah bedroom on June 5, 2002 at the age of 14. ... Official language(s) (none)[1] Capital Salem Largest city Portland Area  Ranked 9th  - Total 98,466 sq mi (255,026 km²)  - Width 260 miles (420 km)  - Length 360 miles (580 km)  - % water 2. ...

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," wrote Katherine Bouton in the New York Times Book Review, "and Alice Sebold maintains almost perfect balance."^[3] The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ...

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."^[4] 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."^[5] The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... For other uses, see Guardian. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

The novel has been assigned in many secondary-school English classes despite the complexity of its storyline and the grimness of its subject matter. It also remains popular with reading groups.

Controversies

Because Susie's character is narrating the story from her own personal heaven, there was some controversy over the depiction of the afterlife. Readers who took a Christian perspective faulted Susie's heaven for being utterly devoid of any apparent religious aspect or God. "It's a very God-free heaven, with no suggestion that anyone has been judged, or found wanting," Hensher stated. Sebold, who was raised Episcopalian, is not religious and therefore intended the heaven to be simplistic in design: For other uses, see Christian (disambiguation). ... This article discusses the term God in the context of monotheism and henotheism. ... This article is about the Episcopal Church in the United States. ...

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'."^[1]

What year does the story end?

One of the subtler ways the novel shows Susie's growing detachment from earthly life is that, as the story goes on, she becomes less exact about chronology. While the device is effective for this purpose, it creates some credibility problems near the end of the novel. Susie states right before the novel ends that it has been not much more than ten years since her disappearance and death, which would put the final scenes in 1985, since Lindsey's daughter Abigail Suzanne still appears to be an infant. However, there is also a reference to "clients she saw in her practice each day," and the context suggests Lindsey is a psychotherapist. If Lindsey was 13 when her older sister was killed, however, she would have been born in 1960. For her to be a psychiatrist or counselor, she would have had to have a considerably extensive education. To have a thriving private practice at the age of 25 would be rather extraordinary, even assuming she may have graduated both high school and college each a year early, and still more so if she managed to do it without taking time off for her pregnancy. “Baby” redirects here. ... Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. ... For other uses, see Psychiatrist (disambiguation). ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion, because: Wikipedia is not a repository of links If you disagree with its speedy deletion, please explain why on its talk page or at Wikipedia:Speedy deletions. ...

There is also an anachronism related to Jack Salmon's heart attack and recovery. When Detective Fenerman comes to the hospital to let the Salmons know that one of the charms from Susie's bracelet has been found, it has been the first sign "after almost seven years of dwindling hope since late 1975," making the year 1982. Later on, though, Abigail is described as reading to her husband from an issue of the Evening Bulletin, a newspaper which ceased publication on January 29 of that same year, although it is clearly warm weather by the time of Jack's heart attack. A possible explanation for the disjointed continuity is Susie's growing disengagement from her family, and their lives on Earth; resulting in her becoming less attentive to time. Look up Anachronism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Year 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar). ... The Philadelphia Bulletin was a daily evening newspaper published from 1847 to 1982 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ... is the 29th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...

Film adaptation

Main article: The Lovely Bones (film)

Director Peter Jackson secured the book's film rights and presently is in production on the project. 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 will endeavor to make it appear "somehow ethereal and emotional, but it can't be hokey."^[6] Oscar-winning actress Rachel Weisz will play the Abigail Salmon role^[7], and Mark Wahlberg will portray Susie's father, Jack Salmon.^[8] The movie began filming in mid-October in Hatfield, Pennsylvania for six weeks of production, which will then move to New Zealand^[9][10] The Lovely Bones is an upcoming film adaptation of the 2002 novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. ... For other persons named Peter Jackson, see Peter Jackson (disambiguation). ... Rachel Weisz (born March 7, 1971) is an Academy Award-winning English film and television actress. ... For the actor and television game show host, see Mark L. Walberg. ... Hatfield is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. ...

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Viner, Katharine; August 24, 2002; "Above and Beyond: Interview with Alice Sebold"; The Guardian; retrieved April 4, 2007.
2. ^ Sebold, Alice, "The Oddity of Suburbia"
3. ^ Katherine Bouton, "What Remains"
4. ^ "A perfect afterlife, The Guardian
5. ^ Philip Hensher, "An eternity of sweet nothings"
6. ^ Source: Variety, "Peter Jackson confirms The Lovely Bones as his next project"
7. ^ Michael Fleming; Pamela McClintock. "Weisz to star in 'Lovely Bones'", Variety, 2007-06-12. Retrieved on 2007-06-13. 
8. ^ Michael Fleming, Tatiana Siegel. "Wahlberg steps into 'Bones'", Variety, 2007-10-21. Retrieved on 2007-10-22. 
9. ^ "Gosling digs up 'Bones' role", Tatiana Siegel, Hollywood Reporter, June 28, 2007, retrieved October 14, 2007
10. ^ "'Rings' director rolls into suburbs", Michael Klein, The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 21, 2007, retrieved October 23, 2007

For other uses, see Guardian. ... Alice Seebold (b. ... Variety is a daily newspaper for the entertainment industry. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 163rd day of the year (164th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 164th day of the year (165th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Variety is a daily newspaper for the entertainment industry. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 294th day of the year (295th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 295th day of the year (296th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• The Lovely Bones Reading Group Guide
• The Lovely Bones at the Internet Movie Database
• A Dark First Novel Suddenly Soars to the Top in The New York Times