The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Just finished this book for the second time. I think I read it in college in one of my promotions classes b/c I immediately remembered the first part of the book when I started reading. But I can't remember now if I ever finished it the first time b/c I didn't remember the end. It's not like me to not finish a book though so maybe I just don't have a good memory.

Overall good book. In my head the dad ended up beatin' the killer up, but I guess I just make up happy endings in my memory. Interesting. But the book did end happy so maybe I just wanted some revenge for the dad. I feel like Harvey deserved a worse punishment for what he did. I liked how everything seemed normal on the outsides of the houses but so much was going on inside. I thought Ray and Ruth were good characters, and I loved how everyone came together at the end. They were all so different but connected.

And now for the quotes - These were my favorites from Lovely Bones.

Pg. 63 "Monkeys! - and he began on the rippling path to forgetting for one more day. The shadow of years was not as big on his small body. He knew I was away, but when people left they always came back." - It's funny to me that they spent so much time protecting Buckley when he didn't mind as much as the others. He was "with" his sister longer than most of the people in the book. In a way he was more comfortable with her being gone than the older people in the book.

Pg. 120 "I did begin to wonder what the word heaven meant. I thought, if this were heaven, truly heaven, it would be where my grandparents lived. Where my father's father, my favorite of them all, would lift me up and dance with me. I would feel only joy and have no memory, no cornfield and no grave." - Nice to see she got her heaven later on.

Pg. 125 " 'How to Commit the Perfect Murder' was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.' " FINALLY - I get the reference to the icicle from the movie. I was totally confused. Eh..not my favorite.

Pg. 280 "His love for my mother wasn't about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother for everything - for her brokenness and her fleeing, for her being there right then in that moment..." - This is really pretty. If it had that funny old style, it would sound like something out of one of Jane Austen's novels.

Pg. 316 "I now saw that drinking was part of what made her who she was. If the worst of what she left on Earth was a legacy of inebriated support, it was a good legacy in my book." - I like this. Accepting people for who they are "flaws" and all.