The (not so) Lovely Bones

Hmmm…

I read the book last year. Though not the best written of works it does have a huge visceral and emotional impact and its themes are strong and affecting. Strangely, apart from a few individual scenes and moments, this film adaptation lacks in both impact and thematic resonance.

Peter Jackson's film of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones has been somewhat sanitised for movie audiences and seems happy to just fall back on sentimentality and overblown FX. What should have been an uncomfortable, heartbreaking, uplifting but – important this – a subtle story comes across as a well produced yet rather hollow melodrama with decent actors and lots of very expensive CGI.

To be honest I’m not really sure what the film of The Lovely Bones was really about or what the point of it was. I suppose it plays best as a coming of age tale as it does retain elements of the coming of age story in the book, based around young Susie Salmon’s yearning for her first boyfriend and her need to grow up, even after her cruel death. In the book she had a first kiss but it never progressed further. After her death she yearned to make love to the boy she loved – especially as in the book (but not in the film) she is horribly violated before being murdered. And that hideous act can’t be her one and only experience of sex. Basically she needed to grow up to be able to move on. But in the film this is over simplified to be all about that one first kiss. The emotional journey of Susie is completed using the same method as in the book only it is now lacking in any real weight and feels kind of rushed and rather awkward. And the characters it happens to in the film are not developed at all so we have no real sense of who they are or of their relationship to each other and of the importance to them of what Susie is doing through them. By ‘the characters’ I mean Ruth Connors, the rather odd, outsider girl from Susie’s school who loves art and poetry and has the ability to sense and sometimes see the dead, and Ray Singh, the handsome Indian/English boy who was Susie’s should-have-been boyfriend. In the book, Ruth and Ray come together and form a close and complex friendship based around Susie’s memory – even though Ruth never knew her very well. In the film this coming together and relationship isn’t developed at all. They chat briefly…and that’s it. Ruth especially is a major character from the book and yet she has only a few brief lines here.

The other major theme of the book is about family. How families can come together and also fall apart. But ultimately how life goes on, and, despite the terrible things that can happen, wonderful things will happen too. In the book a lot of time and attention is paid to the dynamics of the Salmon family and how Susie’s murder affects them all, how it starts to pull the family unit apart but also how her memory ultimately brings them back together with new happiness and love. In the film this theme is skimmed over at best with the positives being reduced to a few shots at the end over Susie’s last voiceover. Basically lip service is paid to the main themes of the book leaving the film feeling rather hollow and lacking. I know that in adapting a book to a film you need to cut away lots of stuff and move stuff around and focus your story more. But when doing that removes much of the point of the story then why bother? So in Peter Jackson’s film we get the pared down, straightforward story of fourteen year old Susie (Saoirse Ronan) being murdered, who then goes to ‘the in-between’ and runs around CGI hills and beaches, yearning for her aborted first kiss with Ray Singh while also watching her dad Jack (Mark Wahlberg) smash up his ships in bottles and obsess about finding her killer. Yep, bare bones of the book and rather unfulfilling. It is odd that Jackson, his wife Fran Walsh together with Phillipa Boyens who between them did such a grand and masterful job adapting the huge Lord of the Rings seem to have dropped the ball with a smaller more intimate tale.

Now, having been rather harsh, this is still a Peter Jackson film. And as a Peter Jackson film The Lovely Bones is technically very well made with certain sequences, scenes and moments being excellent and hitting their targets bang on. The entirety of the sequence in the cornfield with Susie being enticed by George Harvey and then meeting her end at his hands (which we don’t thankfully see) is beautifully directed and acted. You sit there watching it, knowing what is coming, saying to yourself ‘Please…just turn around and run home, Susie.’ Apart from the rape, which doesn’t happen anyway in the movie, and the murder itself, this sequence looks and feels just like how it was described in the book. Then there is Susie’s dad smashing up his ships in bottles and then seeing the strange candlelight reflection in the window. That was genuinely moving. As was the afterlife sequence where Susie realises the true horror of Harvey’s crimes. The sequence where Susie’s little sister Lindsey breaks in to Harvey’s house is also straight from the book and is handled very well. It is supremely tense and creepy.

And so what of the cast? Casting the central role of young Susie Salmon was pivotal to this film. You have to get from Susie innocence combined with genuine rage and sadness for everything she has lost and will never have. She is smart but not especially so. Sister Lindsey is the really bright one who excels at school and at sports. Susie is just a normal teenage girl full of conflicting emotions and bubbling hormones, trying to become a woman and yet still childlike in many of her ways. As Susie, Saoirse Ronan is good. She is not great – but then she is not given especially great material to work with and has probably been directed in an ill-advised manner on occasion. The main culprit for this is in the over sickly and breathy voiceovers. They should have sounded more subtle, mature and wise in their speaking. Instead they are rather overwrought and theatrical. But she is certainly a good actress and with her long limbs and huge emotive blue eyes she looks striking and sells her scenes well enough. Mark Wahlberg as Susie’s dad Jack is good too. It is a low key and understated performance. He is not required to do much except be a nice, quiet chap before later on getting bleary eyed and quietly heartbroken. And Marky Mark does fine. He is believable as a father who has lost the brightest thing in his life. His steady, low-key, unyielding obsession over finding Susie’s killer is played nicely. Rachel Wiesz as Susie’s mum Abigail sadly makes no impact at all. She plays a tiny role in the film and disappears for a large section. Her entire backstory and subplot has been removed. Susan Sarandon as Grandma Lynn is good fun as the comic relief – even more so here than in the book. And then there is Stanley Tucci as George Harvey, the Salmon’s neighbour and the killer of Susie. He is the standout in the film and is very good indeed. Perhaps too good. Tucci is instantly creepy and repulsive as the loner, dollhouse building Harvey. But to be fair that was the character from the book. Almost everyone in the book thought Harvey was odd and creepy with that being the main factor why Jack and his daughter Lindsey suspected him of Susie’s death. And Tucci is certainly good at being bad. Harvey is a genuine monster whose monstrous deeds and compulsions become further revealed towards films end. His manner is reptilian and his methods disgustingly well thought out and planned. You really hope he gets what’s coming to him. Nobody else in the film makes any impact. Ruth and Ray who should have been main characters are sidelined. The actors look the part and say their few lines well enough. But that’s it.

In the end The Lovely Bones is rather a disappointment for me. It is far from a bad film, though. Peter Jackson just seems to have missed much of the point of the story. And while certain parts are handled beautifully and will give your tear ducts a good testing, he has also misjudged or simply missed out things that would give this story the genuine overall impact that it deserves. To my mind the film he made is too overblown, sanitised and over-reliant on flashy CGI. It feels oddly hollow at its core and is lacking in an overall emotional connection while appearing rather muddled in what it is trying to do and/or say. And yet, despite its shortcomings, I still kinda like it…mainly for the scenes and moments Jackson gets dead right. For example Ray telling Susie, “You are beautiful, Susie Salmon.” Grandma Lynn telling Susie about first kisses, saying, “Just have fun, kid.” Ruth seeing Susie’s spirit rush past her in the night. The candle’s ghostly flickering in Susie’s dad’s window. The reveal of the extent of Harvey’s monstrous crimes and the following sad-yet-happy realisation by Susie that she is not alone. And the lovely final words and good wishes Susie gives to us the audience before the screen grows dark. A good film in parts then, but not really one that works as a whole. This is no Heavenly Creatures and certainly no Lord of the Rings. And that’s a real shame.

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My Favourite Books of 2009

Being an avid reader I’ve worked my way through a few paper and ink tales this year. I’ve counted up and have read twelve new (to me) books since Jan 1st 2009 and four rereads of ones I love. Also this year I purchased Necronomicon: the best weird fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. It’s a huge hardback book of around nine hundred pages with all Lovecraft’s stories including the famous Herbert West: Re-Animator, From Beyond, At The Mountains of Madness and The Unnameable. I bought it back in the summer and keep dropping in to it to read a short story here and there with still plenty left to go. Creepy, weird and freaky good it is too.

Of the new (to me) books I’ve read this year, my top five are:


5. Go Ask Malice: A Slayer's Diary by Robert Joseph Levy (2006)

A Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel about rogue slayer Faith Lehane, Go Ask Malice is presented as a journal written by Faith herself as a form of therapy encouraged by her social worker. The journal chronicles teenage Faith's troubled life in the few months leading up to her becoming a Slayer and then the first few months after. It ends with Faith, alone once again, making her way to Sunnydale. All Buffy fans know what happened next.

This is pretty dark stuff. Poor Faith had a horrible life as a kid ending up in foster care and finally in a mental institution. It's at that point that a Watcher finds her and takes her in, telling her of her destiny. Faith's Watcher, Professor Diana Dormer, is caring and protective of her new charge and the two, though very different, form a bond. But Faith is having bad dreams and blackouts. Something is trying to take control of her. Something is looking for revenge from beyond the grave. Revenge against the worst of the worst, the beast who still lives. And it is looking to use Faith, a brand new Slayer, as the instrument of its vengeance.

Go Ask Malice is a very good read and a spot on rendering of my second favourite character in the Buffyverse. The author really captures Faith's speech and attitude on the page. I found myself grinning quite a bit at some of the things she says and does with the journal approach allowing for revelatory and confessional insights in to the mind of this tough and smart yet emotionally and psychologically fragile girl. Oh, and we also find out where she gets her saying “Five by Five” from as well. Go Ask Malice is a must for Buffy fans and utterly essential for Faith fans like me while being a very good book in its own right.

4. Frostbitten by Kelley Armstrong (2009)

Frostbitten is book ten of Canadian Author Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series of supernatural drama/thrillers. The series started back in 2001 with the werewolf novel Bitten, but progressed to other interconnected tales of ghosts, witches, demons, half-demons etc. Bitten was told first person by Elena Michaels, the world’s only female werewolf, turned against her will by her (then) ex-lover Clayton Danvers. At the start of Bitten, Elena had already run away from Clay and the werewolf pack that he’d brought her in to and was trying to make a new life for herself while struggling to cope alone with her lycanthropy. However she was soon pulled back in to pack affairs when a full-scale bloody conspiracy threatened to erupt. Elena reluctantly rejoined the pack and over the intervening years she and Clayton have become a couple again and she has had two young twins by him.

Frostbitten is Elena’s fourth book and is set in the snowy wastes of Alaska, where, as the packs chief investigator and enforcer now, she has gone with Clayton to investigate rumoured wolf attacks and the disappearance of several young women. It could be just wild animals with the women’s disappearances a coincidence, but Elena suspects foul play by possible rogue werewolves. The investigation takes a few unexpected turns including dredging up faces from Clayton’s past as well as terrible memories of Elena’s childhood. And soon she discovers that there is something else is out there in the Alaskan wilderness, something previously unknown that stalks the ancient, frozen land. Something so old, primal and ferocious that it terrifies even the most powerful of werewolves.

Frostbitten, as with all Kelley’s books, is a fun read with lots of great characters thrown in to twisty plots and deadly circumstances while struggling with their own personal relationships. It also has some fun with werewolf mythology while delving deeper in to Elena’s psyche and exploring her complex relationship with Clayton as well as her troubled past and her likely future with the pack. There are mysteries to be solved, some steamy sex and plenty of chases and violent, bloody clashes both in the city and out in the snowy wilderness. Kelley’s prose is not particularly flashy but it is firmly character based and crisply descriptive and she has a knack for dry, witty dialogue. This is partly the reason she was brought in last year to write an arc for the new Angel comic at IDW. She is a Joss fan and he a fan of hers. She has the ability to really get deep inside her character’s minds and make them come alive on the page. Reading them (especially Elena, Clay and the rest of the pack) is just like catching up with old friends you haven’t seen for a long while.

But in the end, when all’s said and done, Frostbitten is just a darn good lycanthropic yarn.

3. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (2002)

On 6 December 1973 fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon was raped and murdered by her neighbour. In The Lovely Bones, Susie tells us her story in first person narration while watching over her family and friends from her own personalised heaven, ‘the in-between’, watching as they struggle to come to terms with her most awful of deaths.

The Lovely Bones was hard going. Don’t get me wrong, it is a very good book - solidly written, always intriguing and never boring. The problem is the almost unending emotional gut punches it delivers to you. For a parent reading this book I’d imagine it would be one hell of a gruelling experience. I’m not a parent and it was pretty tough for me at times. But, thankfully, despite the horror of Susie’s murder, there is a warmth and hopefulness around the tale. The Lovely Bones is primarily about discovery, growing up and moving on. It’s a unique coming of age story about someone who will never come of age - at least not as she should. It’s a love story about life and about family.

While not the best-written book ever, The Lovely Bones is always fascinating in its telling of a sad but also hopeful tale in a tough and emotionally challenging way. It is quite simply the most emotionally affecting book I’ve ever read. But it didn’t come across as sentimental or manipulative. It didn’t need to. The subject matter; the realistic way characters behave; the ponderings on love, life, loss, family, guilt, childhood - they all ring true. Powerful stuff.


2. The Travelling Vampire Show by Richard Laymon (2000)

It’s a hot August day in 1963 and three sixteen year olds - narrator Dwight and his two best friends Slim, a tomboy girl, and Rusty, an overweight boy, are determined to go and see the titular Travelling Vampire Show coming to their town that very night. The carnival show promises the only real vampire in captivity: the beautiful, seductive and utterly lethal Valeria. To get to see the show at the notorious spot outside of town called Janks Field, the three friends must overcome various obstacles as well as an unfolding mystery that someone or something may actually be out to get them. This all leads up to one heck of a thrilling and blood-curdling finale, which doesn’t go quite where you’d expect it to go.

The Travelling Vampire Show is not just a horror story. It’s also a coming of age tale much like Stephen King’s The Body (filmed as Stand By Me) - only bloodier and sexier. Getting to the Travelling Vampire Show and overcoming the many obstacles in doing so (rabid dogs, parents, troublesome siblings, arguments, accidents etc.) is the main narrative backbone. But supported by that backbone is an affecting story about three kids’ lives, the bad things some of them have had to endure and the friendships and first love that comes out of it all. This is quite a wonderful little tale with characters you can emphasise with and really care about. Slim in particular is a great creation. She’s a total tomboy and the brains of the operation but is a girl with a troubled family life and an identity crisis. She changes her name every few months depending on what book she’s been reading and what character in it she identifies with most. All three teens are on the cusp of adulthood and their relationships are changing - with each other as well as with family and peers. This is one of the main themes of the book: Change. Along with growing up and maturity in what you do and how you behave.

Along with The Stake this is, in my opinion, the late Richard Laymon’s best work. It is very well written, subtle and sensitive where needed and all out bloody, nasty and gross where you’d hope it to be. I’ve been a fan of his work since the early eighties reading his Beast House books. His style of uber-violence, sex and gore, though never very popular in the US, found a willing audience here in the UK. His books were always such wonderful titillation for a young eager horror-loving mind like mine. But the man could also write character and drama with equal amounts of depth and sensitivity when he wanted. He just didn’t do it that often. A shame really.

1. Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar (2007)

Lonely Werewolf Girl is my favourite new (to me) book I’ve read this past year and the past several years. It does everything exactly right. The characters; the story; the tone and mood; the themes and most of all the humour are all utterly perfect. I’ve never laughed out loud so much while reading a book as I did with this one. It’s like Martin Millar reached in to my brain, scooped out my weirdest, deepest thoughts and wrote this novel just for me. This is most excellent. My only complaint is that the version I have (self-published by the author in the UK for various technical and legal reasons) has quite a few silly typos – something he has apologised for explaining he had no editor or beta reader at the time. The book did have proper publishing deals overseas and has been a big hit. So much so that Martin is currently writing the sequel and a movie is allegedly in the works. A ‘proper’ UK edition of Lonely Werewolf Girl is being published in March 2010, which will have fixed all those typo problems. But to be honest it didn’t really bug me that much as the book is otherwise so well written and wonderfully funny and creative that you just take the typos as a quirk rather in keeping with its punk style.

I won’t bother with a plot synopsis as I’ve already written about this book at length in an earlier blog.

Lonely Werewolf Girl blog post

A great excerpt:

Upstairs, Thrix was shocked at Sarapen’s sudden appearance. She didn’t understand how he could have arrived without her receiving a warning. It was impossible. But there he stood, in his full wolf form, huge and menacing. Vex was nearest to him. She giggled.
“A big wolf! He’s so cute,” she said, and started to pat his head.
Malveria spoke sharply to her niece.
"Agrivex. Please do not pat the werewolf. He is a deadly enemy."
"But he's so cute!"
“Step away this instant.”
Vex withdrew, grumbling that her aunt never let her do anything.

The bottom line is Lonely Werewolf Girl is a fabulous book by a gifted writer who can weave a big, complex tale with a myriad of distinct and interesting characters while juggling drama, action and humour exactly right. I’ve since bought two other books of his to read - Lux the Poet and The Good Fairies of New York. I shall be diving in to The Good Fairies of New York next. A tale about rebellious Scottish fairies going to New York and getting mixed up with a fairy civil war, some oddball humans and The New York Dolls’ Johnny Thunders (?) Sounds bonkers. Yay!

So there you go, my most favoured reading material of 2009. In 2010 Kelley Armstrong has two new books out and Martin Millar has his Lonely Werewolf Girl sequel. Bring it on.

The Lovely Bones (book)

I’d been meaning to read The Lovely Bones for a long time now – even before the Peter Jackson film was announced. And with the film adaptation's release imminent, I finally got around to it.

For those who don’t know, The Lovely Bones is a novel by Alice Sebold published in 2002 that tells the story of a girl called “Salmon. Like the fish. First name Susie.” On 6 December 1973 fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon is raped and murdered by a neighbour. Susie tells us her story in first person narration while watching over her family and friends from her own personalised heaven, ‘the in-between’, watching as they struggle to come to terms with her most awful of deaths. While watching her family in pain, Susie is struggling to let go of her mortal bonds and the terrible sense of loss she feels for the life she will never now have – especially the budding first love with a boy at school that started and ended with just one fleeting kiss.

I liked The Lovely Bones a great deal but it sure was hard going. It’s one of the most emotionally affecting things I've ever read. There were several places in Alice Sebold’s text where I was unable to keep the old eyes from leaking. Several places where I just had to stop and say to myself ‘Okay. That’s enough for now.’ Why? I guess the subject matter and the original way in which it's presented. The way the book presents the characters and how they relate to each other in the wake of tragedy. I’d defy the hardest of hearts not to be moved by young Susie Salmon, and then for that heart not to break as her tale goes on, before becoming healed at story’s end. For a parent reading this book I’d imagine it would be a gruelling experience. I’m not a parent and it was pretty tough for me at times. But despite the horror of Susie’s murder there is also an inherent warmth and hopefulness around the whole tale. It is sad and tragic, yes, but also rather life affirming in a strange way.

The Lovely Bones does a great job showing the different dynamics of a family shattered by the worst possible tragedy, of showing how that family tries and fails and tries again to put itself back together. As a novel it didn’t quite go where I thought it would. It’s not a murder mystery or solve the crime and catch the killer type of story. There are elements of that in there but that’s not what the story is about. This is primarily a story about discovery, of growing up and of moving on. It’s a unique coming of age tale about someone who will never come of age - at least not as she should. It’s a love story about life and family told from the perspective of someone who can now see every tiny aspect of life and family but cannot participate in it anymore.

The Lovely Bones is not the best written book ever. The prose can be a little dry at times. However it is always intriguing and tells a sad but also hopeful tale in a tough and often emotionally challenging way.

I hope that Peter Jackson’s movie captures the spirit and feel of the book, the horrific tragedy that can move you to tears but also the warmth and humanity that can make you smile.