"I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973" Susie tells the reader (Sebold, 2002, p.5). In Alice Sebold's novel "The Lovely Bones", Mr. Harvey brutally rapes and murders Susie Salmon and is never caught. It is essential to the central themes of the novel that Mr. Harvey is never caught. This is because the book, with a few dramatic exceptions, zeroes in on the intangibles surrounding Susie's death, such as the way in which those …showed first 75 words of 783 total…

…showed last 75 words of 783 total…authorities' failure to catch Harvey allows Sebold to unfold the lives of each dynamic character, uninterrupted by what would be the tangible evidence of Susie's murder. Ultimately, Sebold displays that for those who Susie leaves behind, the point of life is not vengeance, but the search for how to live again in her absence. Bibliography: 1. Sebold, A. (2002). The Lovely Bones. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 2. Interview with Alice Sebold. (2002). Recorded Books, LLC, New York.