at last
at last. the bubble that’s been hovering around me like a second skin the past few months keeping me from penetrating life: my life, an imaginary life — finally burst. i picked up alice sebold’s the lovely bones, a book i’ve been avoiding. i don’t do hype. i don’t do murder. but i read that first chapter and i felt absolutely smacked. hurled across the room and smacked. i hunkered down and read that entire book in a day and a half. if a book that tackles something so grotesque and repulsive can be beautiful, it is. sebold is poetry itself. somehow getting inside those characters helped me open something inside myself. i looked up from the last page and saw my husband and my son and i thought, this is good. what i have, here, right now, is good. at last.
7 Responses to “at last”
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I’m glad you found a book that was just what you’d been searching for. As for me, I’ve read the book and just didn’t enjoy it. I think, the more I read your posts and the book club stuff, that maybe I just am on a more basic reading level. Whatever, it doesn’t matter as long as I enjoy reading, right?!
not basic, rebecca. i just have eclectic (or, shall we say, weird) taste. don’t let that keep you from reading!
Wow. Well now I have to read it. Maybe I can get something to shock me back into living.
I looked up some reviews on this book and it looked like everyone who read it either loved it or hated it. Interesting.
that is what i need. and to call you too.
I’m glad to find I actually read a book that you also read! I found myself enthralled a year or so ago with “Lovely Bones” Thanks for being able to put into words how a subject such as this is handled so gently, poigniantly. Great Read!
Most people I’ve spoken with absolutely detested this book, but I was much like you, enthralled with a book that is simultaneously attractive & repulsive. I look forward to more of your reading suggestions since it appears we have similar tastes.