Inside the snow globe on my father's desk, there was a penguin
wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf. When I was little my
father would pull me into his lap and reach for the snow globe.
He would turn it over, letting all the snow collect on the top,
then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall
gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I
thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this,
he said, "Don't worry Susie; he has a nice life. He's trapped
in a perfect world."
The Lovely Bones
Intro before first chapter, Page 3. |
My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was
fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.
The Lovely Bones
Father, about his son. |
You aren't leaving, Susie. You're mine now.
The Lovely Bones
Mr. Harvey, Chapter 1, Page 12. |
I'd say it would be pretty hard to play soccer on the soccer
field when it's approximately twenty feet from where my sister
was supposedly murdered.
The Lovely Bones
Lindsey Salmon to Mr. Caden, her principal,
Chapter 2, Page 33. |
"You know something," my father said.
"Go home. I can't help you."
The Lovely Bones
Jack Salmon and George Harvey, Chapter
4, Page 57. |
"Mr. Salmon," she said, "I would do exactly
what you are doing: I would talk to everyone I needed to, I
would not tell too many people his name. When I was sure,"
she said, "I would find a quiet way, and I would kill him."
The Lovely Bones
Ruana Singh to Jack Salmon, Chapter 6,
Page 88. |
And as Flora twirled, other girls and women came through the
field in all directions. Our heartache poured into one another
like water from cup to cup. Each time I told my story, I lost
a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew
I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth
is real and it is every day. It is like the flower or like the
sun; it cannot be contained.
The Lovely Bones
Susie and Laura, Page 186, Chapter 14. |
Stones and bones;
snow and frost;
seeds and beans and polliwogs.
Paths and twigs, assorted kisses,
We all know who Susie misses...
The Lovely Bones
Lullaby for Susie, Chapter 20, Page 278. |
"Ray?"
"I don't know what to call you."
"Susie."
The Lovely Bones
Ray and Susie after she has fallen back
to Earth, Chapter 22, Page 308. |
"I know what you did."
"I stand warned."
The Lovely Bones
Lindsey and Abigail, Chapter 23, Page 317. |
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 brought 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.
The Lovely Bones
Susie, Chapter 23, Page 320. |
So there are cakes and pillows and colours galore, but underneath
this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room
where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say
anything. Give no story. Make no claim. Where you can live at
the edge of your skin for as long as you wish. This wide wide
Heaven is about flathead nails and the soft down of new leaves,
wild rollercoaster rides and escaped marbles that fall then
hang then take you somewhere you could never have imagined in
your small-heaven dreams.
The Lovely Bones
Susie describes "the wide wide Heaven"
where she is, Bones, Page 325. |
I wish you all a long and happy life.
The Lovely Bones
Susie, Bones, last lines of novel, Page
328. |
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