I Wish You All A Long and Happy Life

Jessica Gordon
Mr. Coon
AP English
26 August 2008

I Wish You All a Long and Happy Life

I have never had such strong, negative emotions after reading Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold as I have had with any other novel. While I have read many books in the past that were unfulfilling, Lovely Bones took a common feeling of disappointment to a new level. Even though I read this novel months ago, I am still aroused by emotions of anger and hatred when I think about the conclusion to this day.

When I first began reading Lovely Bones, I was engrossed in Sebold’s ghost-like murder mystery that encompassed graphic imagery surrounding the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl. I read the novel in two days, only putting it down for small breaks. As I became captivated in understanding Suzie’s heaven, feeling the Salmons’ pain, and supporting Jack’s endeavor to capture Mr. Harvey, I continued to wait for Mr. Harvey to be brought to justice. As each page passed, I truly believed that closure would finally be brought to both Suzie and her family after such a disturbing and shocking event occurred. When I got to the last sentence of the last page, I was not merely disappointed; rather, I was overcome with anger and rancorous feelings. This was the first time that I had actually thrown a book on the floor and stormed out of my room after reading the last line, “I wish you all a long and happy life.” I was not disappointed in the ending; rather, I was filled with hatred: hatred towards Alice Sebold for providing no feelings of security and closure to the reader.

Sebold’s lack of a true conclusion was more disturbing than the graphic, chilling imagery that was present throughout the storyline. The point of a conclusion is to not only to end a story but to also bring some sort of closure to the reader. Sebold’s last line of “ I wish you all a long and happy life,” provided no closure; in fact, I was angry that nothing was brought to Suzie Salmon and her family. This is because the disturbing and brutal nature of Suzie Salmon’s murder--- She narrated and recalled her own rape throughout the novel from her Heaven--- should not be left without justice being brought against her rapist Mr. Harvey. Sebold’s extremely detailed, graphic account of Suzie’s rape needed to be accounted for: Mr. Harvey’s receiving legal punishment, Suzie’s father receiving closure that his assumptions and intuitions were correct about Harvey, or Len Fenerman’s personal realization that Mr. Harvey was the murderer could have all been possible endings. These alternative conclusions would have given the reader a sense of security and closure after struggling to read about Mr. Harvey’s raping and shredding Suzie’s body to pieces. Because Sebold effectively conveyed emotions of fear, shock, suspicion, and pain to her readers, her last line seemingly reversed her work and dismissed her entire novel. This is shown through Jack’s persistent work with Lindsey to break into Harvey’s house to find evidence, Suzie’s narrating what she longed for from her own heaven, and the overall emotional struggle of family in friends to cope with such a disturbing death of a young girl. The emotional struggles that the characters faced were downplayed by such a generic, non-specific ending. In my opinion, the ending should have provided a profound, strong statement as to the disturbing realities that life presents and how individuals cope with these unimaginable events. Suzie’s statement of wishing a nonspecific person a happy life seemingly takes away the emphasis of the pain and shock that her family went through.

More specifically, Sebold’s language sets up her novel to need a strong, even provocative, ending that brings closure to such an extreme, disturbing event. When Suzie states from her heaven that, “part of me wished swift vengeance, wanted my father to turn into the man he could have never been—a man violent in rage” (Seybold 58). This suggests that Suzie wanted her father to become angry and almost hysterical to bring justice to Mr. Harvey. Suzie’s continuation puts extreme emphasis on the guilt that Jack had: “the guilt on him, the hand of G-d pressing down on him, saying, You were not there when your daughter needed you” ( Sebold 58). These two recounts of a pained father grieving over his murdered daughter need closure in the conclusion; the reader feels the pain of the father and needs to feel a sense of relief after being strung through the disturbing murder of Suzie.

Overall, closure was needed to conclude this unsettling, graphic novel. My anger stems from the fact that, as a reader, I feel the pain in the novel, yet there is no effective conclusion to help settle my disturbed, unsettling feelings. My having such a powerful emotional response to Sebold’s writing as the reader symbolizes that a strong ending needed to be in place.
836 words

Summer Reading:
1. Salem Falls By Jodi Picoult
2. Change of Heart By Jodi Picoult
3. Stolen Innocence By Elissa Wall
4. This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin
5. Namesake By Jhumpa Lahiri
6. Lovely Bones By Alice Sebold
7. The Brain that Changes Itself By Norman Doidge ( Unfinished)
8. Reading Lolita in Tehran By Azar Nafisi (Unfinished)
9. About 10-15 articles on epilepsy, seizure suppressor genes, and drosophila