Short description
Susie Salmon speaks to us from heaven, because she was murdered when she was 14 years old by a man who lived in the same neighbourhood. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love and do the things she has never had the chance to do. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet.
Review
Sebold's debut novel is strikingly unusual from the start - it's narrated by a dead 14-year old girl. After her brutal murder, Susie Salmon watches her family collapse from a gazebo in her own personal version of heaven. Though she can have whatever she wants merely by thinking about it, all she really wants is impossible: to be alive, and to reciprocate the love from her friends and family still on Earth. Despite the grim premise, this story is an affirmation of life over death and how the living need the dead to anchor themselves to this world. There are no obvious surprises or twists: Susie describes her grisly death at the hands of the neighbourhood loner, George Harvey, at the very beginning of the book. From above, she cannot bear to give up her watch over her kith and kin, even occasionally breaking through the Inbetween to contact them briefly. Her face flashes in the shards of broken glass, her soul flutters past fellow schoolgirl Ruth, her love for her mother follows her despite her inability to come to terms with her grief. Meanwhile, her kith and kin struggle to come to terms with the lack of closure regarding Susie's death. Her father Jack needs to find her killer and over the years the obsession becomes banal, a background detail, like his wife's growing distance. Lindsey, her sister, throws herself into her books and her boyfriend, and practises being hard. Buckley, her little brother who was never told precisely why Susie went away and is never coming back, learns to turn his heart to stone. During this Susie is in their thoughts, words and actions, not knowing she is watching them. Sebold's plain prose is spotted with humour, partly because of rather than in spite of the subject matter. Black-clad Ruth writes poetry with titles like 'In Pieces' and 'The Lip of the Grave'. Her romanticism of a girl she hardly knew follows her into her escape to New York, where she roams the streets of Manhattan writing down details of killed and raped girls in dark alleys and corners. She manages to weave a connection with Susie in a way that would be impossible had she been alive. The suspension of reality is essential throughout, but some questions linger regardless. How did Jack just know from looking at the green house that George Harvey was the killer? Indeed, how could Harvey elude the law for so long? But despite these and other petty niggling doubts, this is a timeless tale of love and loss. (Kirkus UK)