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The Lovely Bones
That said, The Lovely Bones is worth reading if you aren't a self-appointed Definer of Dark Fiction like I am.
It's still a horror novel, yes indeedy, but for me,
it copped-out and wound up landing in a warm and fuzzy category closer to
Chicken Soup for the Dark Soul than the truly outstanding dark and chilling debuts of 2002:
The Snowman's Children by Glen Hirshberg and A Scattering of Jades by Alex Irvine.
Copyright © 2003 Paula Guran. All Rights Reserved. |
This review was originally part of a column about the best dark debut novels of the year, because, despie its popularity
and (as we now know, a Stoker for best first novel) it was not one of the best
debuts of the year. It's sold a bazillion copies (and good on it for that) and was probably
the most talked-about book of 2002. Despite a lot of cliches, tricks a genre writer
would never get away with, and pure hokum, Sebold is a good writer, so it almost made it onto my "B
List." But the more I thought, the more I realized that Sebold does
everything in her considerable authorial power to convince the reader
that horror may have an unfortunate aftermath, but leaves no lasting
mark. This is, I think, a peculiarly American conceit: the use of the
metaphysical to evoke the maudlin, to comfort rather than confront, to
soothe rather than subvert. And, maybe, that's why the book is so
popular. America very much wants to be told that all Bad Things can be
fixed and there is never, ever a reason to be truly afraid of
anything. The best dark fiction is often redemptive, but The Lovely
Bones denies that redemption is needed at all. Even Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, our current cardinal cultural conduit for the exploration of
the dark side of the daily, knows better than this -- and she's died
twice.