Lovely Bones by Alice Seabold

Alice Seabold’s second novel Lovely Bones (2002), having sold over a million copies is a narrative piece in the voice of the protagonist. It has been proclaimed the masterstroke amongst Seabold’s three novels, her first one being called Lucky (1999) and the most recent one – The Almost Moon (2007).

Oblivious of any snare, Susie Salmon takes a shortcut to school in suburban Philadelphia on 6th December, 1973 – the day she is brutally raped and murdered by her ‘unassuming’ neighbor, Mr. George Harvey. The story enfolds as Suzie looks down on those dearest (upon those might have negative connotations) to her from, not quite in heaven, but somewhere in between. Battling emotions puts Susie in a mire: Can she accept her family moving on from the tragedy of her death? And can she come to terms with her own demise while her murdered still roams unpunished? The story is spread across a number of years and traces the hardships Susie’s family faces while attempting to heal their wounds; the greatest, but not the solitary one, being her death. The narration gives the reader glimpses into the lives of several characters through Susie’s memories and thoughts while she looks on from her perch up above.

The text is layered and bestirring. Seabold’s illustration of emotion is amplified by her attention to detail, and the characterization of that which is mundane and habitual as almost divine. Be it sheer strength of a father’s love for his daughter, the perplexity of teenagers, infidelity of a mother and the enigma of a murderer – The author paints vivid, and often poignant, pictures.

Afterlife is a theme which flows through the book. At one point in the book Susie Salmon says ‘I wasn’t lost, or frozen, or gone… I was alive; I was alive in my own perfect world.’ Susie cannot pass over to heaven until she is at peace with herself. At the same time, she describes herself as the air of the cold winter surrounding her first and only love, Ray Singh. This depiction of life after death has sparked of many a debate. While there is a staunch opposition, there are still more proponents of it. Since the heaven described in the book is Susie’s personal heaven, some are critical of the lack of affiliation to any religion or God. Alice Seabold herself raised an Episcopalian commented, “To me, the idea of heaven would give you certain pleasures, certain joys – but it’s very important to have an intellectual understanding of why you want those things. It’s also about discovery, and being able to come to the conclusions that elude you in life. So it’s from the most simplistic things – Susie wants a duplex – to larger things, like being able to understand why her mother was always slightly distant from her”. She also added that the book was not intended to have religious connotation and spoke about separate themes. However, as with all literature, Lovely Bones open to interpretation by her readers.

Lovely Bones, in my own interpretation, evoked a positive reaction because it somehow made helplessness and grief appear sublime and beautiful simultaneously. While being a bestseller, however, it has still received mixed reviews from the critics. The question is, does the book cinch it for you? Check out Lovely Bones, at the nearest bookstore.

stay hungry stay foolish

The first thing about this book that caught my eyes in the bookstore was the title of the book. I think it is about "steve job".

Once I picked up the book, I realized that it was not about the ‘Steve Job’ but about the Steves of India.

It’s a book written by an IIM-A (Indian Institute Of Management) Alumni, about IIM-A Alumni who are entrepreneurs, published by CIIE in IIM-A. Well that’s a book for the people, by the people, of the people. Jokes aside, the fact that the book is focused on IIM-A alumni, is probably its strength and weakness. The book gives us a peek into the minds and lives of some truly exceptional first generation (mostly) Indian entrepreneurs, each one an IIM-A alumni. The fact that it focuses on one institute graduates should have made the difficult decision of whom to include and whom not to include, a bit easier for the author. But this has also restricted the inclusion of various other entrepreneurs who might have had a different story to tell.

After reading halfway this book you feel like you are reading the same thing over and over again. The author goes out of the way to emphasize that almost every individual portrayed in the book is a first gen entrepreneur coming from a middle class family. Some of the recurring themes in the all the stories are “Don’t chase money, enjoy the work, money will come”, “When the company is new it’s almost zero holiday work”, “Entrepreneurs have a heavily unbalanced family life and have to sacrifice a lot.”

Except for some jargon that is thrown in, which might need most of us who are not MBA grads to refer online, the book is a light read. The way the book is organized and typeset is another feather in the hat of the publisher. The edition I got had a witty title, nice photograph, a small summary, and a mini prologue preceding every interview. Each interview is followed by some Advice from the interviewee meant for young entrepreneurs.

Some of the points in favor of reading this book are that the book being more or less a collection of interviews, each mutually exclusive of the other. This means that you can read the book at your own pace and skip back and forth and still not miss anything. Also the language used is simple and light, the absence of big statistical numbers (except for the occasional net worth and stock price) makes it even better.

If you are looking for the nitty-gritty details of entrepreneurship, this book is not for you. The book does have enough material to encourage one on in the road to entrepreneurship, but fails by not emphasizing much out the potholes in that road. More elaborations on the hardships faced by the entrepreneurs would have been welcome.

Reading this book can be an enriching experience for you, like the time when i found out that the founders of some of the better known Indian websites like naukri.com, indiainfoline.com, makemytrip.com are all from the same B-School. Not much to go by, but another nugget of information i will be hard pressed to find on the internet.

The book is one of its kind here in India. Young wanna-be-entrepreneurs can take a hint or two from the book. If you are even moderately interested in the Indian Business scene, this is probably a must read book for you. The book is every bit inspiring as Steve jobs ‘Stay Hungry Stay Foolish’ speech and comes highly recommended.