I just finished reading The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, and I'm not sure what to make of it. First of all, I don't think I like reading anymore nearly as much as I used to. I'm not really into the whole place setting and character development thing anymore.. I find myself surfing countless pages of text until I hit the next 'major event', and then going back to fill in the holes after I find out what's coming next.
The Lovely Bones is narrated by Susie Salmon, a girl horrifically murdered at the tender age of fourteen. From her heaven, she watches the lives of her family members and neighbours unfold: the futile police investigation, the estrangement of her parents from one another, the budding romance between her younger sister and a boy from school, the undisturbed existence of her murderer. In the novel, people go first to a simple heaven, until they have finally let go of the things on Earth that held them back and go to a more comfortable, wide heaven.
But for Susie and her family, the question is always How? How do you move on from a tragedy that changes the architecture of your family forever? how do you forget the name that stabs a father's heart every time it's said? how do you become... free?
"How do you make the switch?" I asked.
"It's not as easy as you might think," [Franny] said. "You have to stop desiring certain answers."
"I don't get it."
" If you stop asking why you were killed instead of someone else, stop investigating the vacuum left by your loss, stop wondering what everyone left on Earth is feeling," she said, "you can be free. Simply put, you have to give up on Earth."
This seemed impossible to me.
When wounds are fresh, healing seems impossible. But in the end, I guess it all comes down to a matter of time. The empty bedroom, initially left untouched, eventually became home for the lovely and loving Grandma Lynn. The leftover clothes, packed away in boxes in the basement, Susie's younger brother pulled out years later to make gardening stakes. With time, the unimaginable can become reality.
Time is something we all as humans are bound by. We all lose it at the same rate... never to be claimed again, and never to be gained, stolen, or borrowed, no matter how badly we want more of it (especially before an especially intimidating exam or demanding assignment). In the same way, we can't make it pass any faster than it does. We can't keep expecting results that only time and experience can bring about; we cannot will what we know or want into existence by sheer determination. I must not continually dress a wound that only time can heal.
I have to stop trying to skip all the pages. I have to live the place setting. Enjoy, experience, and endure the character development. And slowly, in its own time, the pieces of what's coming next will come together.
