The Lovely Bones - Book Report

The lovely bones by Alice Sebold

INDEX

  1. Author

  2. Plot   Write a news paper article

  3. Characters – Write a letter from one of the main                     character

  4. Themes: Find six keywords and explain their meaning

  5. Language + Setting: Rewrite a chapter or section of     the novel from another     character’s point of view

Book report by Raina Monika

Name:                                         Alice Sebold |
Date of Birth:                               1963 |
Nationality:                                 American |
Gender:                                       Female |
Occupation:                                 Writer |

Alice Sebold's first published book was a memoir of her rape as an eighteen-year-old college freshman. Titled Lucky because one of the policemen told her that she was lucky to be alive--not long before Sebold's attack, another young woman had been killed and dismembered in the same tunnel--the book was many years in the making. Sebold returned to Syracuse University, the scene of the rape, and finished her degree. She studied writing, and wanted to write her story then, but kept failing. "I wrote tons of bad poetry about it and a couple of bad novels about it--lots of bad stuff," Sebold told Dennis McLellan of the Los Angeles Times. She explained to McLellan why the novels were not successful: "I felt the burden of trying to write a story that would encompass all rape victims' stories and that immediately killed the idea of this individual character in the novel. So the novels tended to be kind of fuzzy and bland, and I didn't want to make any political missteps."

Sebold continued trying to write after graduation and moved to New York City, where she lived for ten years. "I worked a lot of different jobs and became a competent New Yorker, which is no small task, and went through a lot of stuff and rediscovered reading on my own and I became more honest to who I was, which...