Heaven

I haven't done a lot today but I did finish another book. It was The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. It is a fantastic book but I would hesitate to recomend it because some might fight the subject difficult.

The book focuses on Suzie and unusually for a lead character, she is dead. She watches her family, friends, first (and only) love and her murderer from her heaven. The most difficult thing is how she died, she fell into the hands of a paedophile. Now I know this sounds unpleasant and potentially horrific but the book just isn't either of those things.

Alice writes with such honesty and sensitivity and although nothing is left out it is not written to shock. The book is all about acceptance and the healing power of time I suppose. It was gripping and interesting and all the characters were likeable and human (except the obvious one, who was just human).

Another thing is that she has managed to talk about death and heaven without being religous or mentioning God or angels once. This heaven could belong to so many different religions. That is quite some achievement! Nothing riles so many people up so easily as messing with issues of faith...

It did make me cry - but then a lot of things make me cry. I cry at happy films. I cry at sad films. I cry at books as well....

I can now appreciate why the BBC placed it on their list of 100 greatest books and I hope the other books I have chosen to read are this good and interesting.