| Rarely
has an author had such an impact on international literature
with her first novel, especially when it focuses on the dark
subjects of rape, child murder, and the dissolution of families.
Yet with The
Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold seemed to manage the impossible.
“My name was Salmon,
like the fish; first name, Susie. I was 14 when I was murdered
on December 6, 1973.” So begins The
Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold’s novel about loss and
redemption, one of the best-reviewed novels of 2002. The book
quickly became an unprecedented international bestseller, with
translations in over 40 languages and American hardcover sales
alone of nearly three million copies. Three months after the
publication of The
Lovely Bones, Sebold’s 1999 memoir Lucky,
an account of her rape at the age of 18 and the trial that followed,
was issued in paperback. This searing account of violence and
the criminal justice system also rose to number one on The
New York Times Bestseller list.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin,
Sebold grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and attended Syracuse
University as well as the University of Houston and UC Irvine.
Sebold is also the author
of the novel The
Almost Moon (2007).
Peter Jackson, the Academy
Award winning director of The Lord of the Rings, will
write and direct the film version of The
Lovely Bones for a 2009 release.
•••
“Ms. Sebold [has]
the ability to capture both the ordinary and the extraordinary,
the banal and the horrific, in lyrical, unsentimental prose.”
The New York
Times
”[The Lovely Bones]
is an utterly original and deeply affecting novel, one that…ultimately
creates a form of its own.”
– Maria Russo, Washington
Post
”Sebold takes an enormous
risk in her wonderfully strange debut novel…A stunning
achievement.”
– The New Yorker
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