Alice Sebold is the author of two novels, The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon, and the memoir Lucky. She lives in California with her husband, Glen David Gold.
Alice Sebold is the author of the bestselling novels The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon, and the memoir Lucky. She lives in California.
"Ms. Sebold's achievements: her ability to capture both the
ordinary and the extraordinary, the banal and the horrific, in
lyrical, unsentimental prose; her instinctive understanding of the
mathematics of love between parents and children; her gift for
making palpable the dreams, regrets and unstilled hopes of one girl
and one family."
"Set in a heaven as real and possible as the earth is mysterious
and shifting, THE LOVELY BONES explores, with clear-eyed affection
and wit, the romance of family life, the shy, funny turbulence of
adolescence and the painful tracks love and loss make through our
world."
"What a wonderful writer Alice Sebold is. Out of darkness she makes
light, out of despair and violence, beauty, out of deep loss a
peculiar, hard-won gain. All her characters, for good or ill,
travel to surprising places and so do we, her extremely fortunate
readers."
"Ms. Sebold's achievements: her ability to capture both the
ordinary and the extraordinary, the banal and the horrific, in
lyrical, unsentimental prose; her instinctive understanding of the
mathematics of love between parents and children; her gift for
making palpable the dreams, regrets and unstilled hopes of one girl
and one family."
"Set in a heaven as real and possible as the earth is mysterious
and shifting, THE LOVELY BONES explores, with clear-eyed affection
and wit, the romance of family life, the shy, funny turbulence of
adolescence and the painful tracks love and loss make through our
world."
"What a wonderful writer Alice Sebold is. Out of darkness she makes
light, out of despair and violence, beauty, out of deep loss a
peculiar, hard-won gain. All her characters, for good or ill,
travel to surprising places and so do we, her extremely fortunate
readers."
The heroine of Sebold's first novel (after the memoir Lucky) is already dead, but that doesn't keep her from talking. Teenager Susie Salmon looks down benevolently from Heaven as her family heals and her murderer is run to ground. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Sebold's first novel after her memoir, Lucky is a small but far from minor miracle. Sebold has taken a grim, media-exploited subject and fashioned from it a story that is both tragic and full of light and grace. The novel begins swiftly. In the second sentence, Sebold's narrator, Susie Salmon, announces, "I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." Susie is taking a shortcut through a cornfield when a neighbor lures her to his hideaway. The description of the crime is chilling, but never vulgar, and Sebold maintains this delicate balance between homely and horrid as she depicts the progress of grief for Susie's family and friends. She captures the odd alliances forged and the relationships ruined: the shattered father who buries his sadness trying to gather evidence, the mother who escapes "her ruined heart, in merciful adultery." At the same time, Sebold brings to life an entire suburban community, from the mortician's son to the handsome biker dropout who quietly helps investigate Susie's murder. Much as this novel is about "the lovely bones" growing around Susie's absence, it is also full of suspense and written in lithe, resilient prose that by itself delights. Sebold's most dazzling stroke, among many bold ones, is to narrate the story from Susie's heaven (a place where wishing is having), providing the warmth of a first-person narration and the freedom of an omniscient one. It might be this that gives Sebold's novel its special flavor, for in Susie's every observation and memory of the smell of skunk or the touch of spider webs is the reminder that life is sweet and funny and surprising,. Agent, Henry Dunow. (July 3) Forecast: Sebold's memoir, Lucky, was the account of her rape in 1981, at Syracuse University. It is, of course, impossible to read The Lovely Bones without considering the memoir, but the novel moves Sebold effortlessly into literary territory. A long list of writers including Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen blurb The Lovely Bones, and booksellers should expect the novel to move quickly; the early buzz has been considerable. Foreign rights have been sold in England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain and Sweden, with film rights to Film Four. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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