SubscribeSusie Salmon, (like the fish), is fourteen years old in 1973. She has “mousy brown hair”, a family she loves, (including a great dog), and a junior high school she goes to. She is also dead, and this story is Susie telling the reader about her life, her death, and what happened after that.
This is a sad, heartbreaking, kind of story. Susie watches from heaven as her family deals with her absence, aching to be with them, but mostly unable to be. So much is lost! Susie was just at that age where she was starting to have crushes on boys, and then, just when she starts dating someone wonderful, she dies before it gets a chance to go anywhere. She never gets to grow up. She never even gets to attend high school. Her sister and baby brother are shocked and stunted for years and years, and her parents fall apart in completely different ways from each other. What once was a happy family is soon one in pieces, and the reader watches along with Susie as those pieces fall and shatter.
Innocence is lost for everyone. Susie is raped and murdered by a man from her neighborhood. (The reader learns this on the second page of the story, so, I don’t feel I am giving anything away here). It was her first sexual experience. The town she lived in was previously considered to be “safe”. After Susie dies, every person in town has to stop feeling safe, and start considering the implications of what happened, that it happened in their town, and that Susie’s killer is still out there somewhere.
Sebold captures perfectly what it feels like to be fourteen years old. That mix of feeling both too old and too young at the same time, the awkwardness, the insecurity, the passionate emotions and the bright and shiny hope of what the future will bring in the years ahead. It is all there. Susie stays this way as her family on earth ages and grows up. It intensifies the entire story. Sebold also has painted an accurate picture of grief and loss, and the different ways people deal with it. She makes it real.
I also liked the way Sebold described heaven. It doesn’t match up to the way any particular religion defines it, but its definitely a “heaven”. Its comfortable and magical and timeless. I found it quite interesting.
This is a beautiful story, and very well written, but, for me, its just to sad. I decided to read this book because its one of those books that so many people tell me I should read, and a book that people rave about. I am glad I did read it, and I did like it. Its just too sad for me to want to read again anytime soon.
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