History Literature / TheLovelyBones

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* BittersweetEnding: The story ends about 10-11 years after Susie's murder. By then [[spoiler: Susie, her family, and her first love have accepted her death and moved on. Her family has also reconciled, deepened their bonds with each other and grown stronger as individuals. Minus some photographs, Susie's remaining possessions are donated, and her loved ones leave her in their memories, where Susie believes she was meant to be. Susie graduates to "wide wide Heaven", and only looks down at the Earth and her family sporadically. Lindsey and Samuel are married and have a child. Lindsey is a therapist, Ray is a doctor, and Ruth is trying to show everyone that the dead talk to the living. However, the safe containing Susie's body remains undiscovered in its sinkhole, and with the city considering filling it in, there is a chance it never will be. This means that Susie's family and friends may never be able to have a proper funeral or even know what befell her in that underground den. Though her murderer is killed after falling into a ravine (an outcome which might have been caused by Susie), preventing him from creating more victims, he is also never taken to court for his crimes and can no longer reveal where he buried his victims. Also, since it takes several weeks for his body to be found in the snowdrift and Susie ascends to "wide wide Heaven" a few pages later (thus ending the story), we never learn if his body was positively identified. Though the cold may help preserve the body, Susie's loved ones may never know that her murderer is dead, and thus believe that he is still out there creating new victims and escaping justice.]] In real life cases such as these, a fully wrapped-up conclusion doesn't always happen. Bitter memories and new sweet ones will remain combined in the fallout. At the very least, in Susie's reality, her family had found a way to live on and in the end should be together again in the afterlife.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: For kids in more rural or suburban areas with some open areas, the idea that kids regularly cut through a cornfield on their walks to and from school isn't an unusual choice. To urban readers who have no experience dealing with it, this comes off as a WhatAnIdiot thing to do.

* BookEnds: Susie on life. The book opens with her introduction telling us about when she died and then ends by wishing everyone a happy life.

* GriefInducedSplit: Abigail abandons her family and moves to California in the wake of her daughter Susie's murder. In the novel, she is gone for eight years, whereas the time period is shorter in [[Film/TheLovelyBones the film adaptation]].

* HelplessObserverProtagonist: Although Susie can interact with the living world a little bit, it's extremely limited and Susie is mostly relegated to watching as her family and friends each deal with their grief in their own way. The only time she actively influences anything is when [[spoiler:Ruth, a young woman with extrasensory abilities, temporarily swaps bodies with her so Susie can experience life again for just a few hours]].

* BikerBabe: Lindsey seems to have a phase as one. Her husband's brother runs a repair shop and she and Samuel ride home from graduation on them and she has a short haircut at the time.

* AdultFear: The premise is based on the worst possible outcome of the "Oh shit, my daughter was supposed to be home hours ago; what if she's dead?" fear.

Tropes specifically about the book go here. For the film See ''Film/TheLovelyBones''.

!!The Book Provides examples of:

%%* LadyDrunk: Grandma Lynn.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: [[spoiler:Rather than a victorious story about Susie's murderer getting caught and brought to justice, the book focuses on how Susie's death affects her family and friends. As in real life, everyone grieves in different ways - some accept Susie's death faster than others. By the book's end, years after the murder, the family is finally coming to terms with it to the point of getting rid of some of Susie's old things.]]

* RealityEnsues: [[spoiler:Rather than a victorious story about Susie's murderer getting caught and brought to justice, the book focuses on how Susie's death affects her family and friends. As in real life, everyone grieves in different ways - some accept Susie's death faster than others. By the book's end, years after the murder, the family is finally coming to terms with it to the point of getting rid of some of Susie's old things.]]

* {{Revenge}}: Jack's goal going into the cornfield is to take revenge on Harvey for killing his daughter [[spoiler: it doesn't work as he runs into Clarissa and Brian instead, and he ends up needing a new knee]].

* ShoutOut

* {{Revenge}}: Jack's goal going into the cornfield is to take revenge on Harvey for killinh his daughter [[spoiler: it doesn't work as he runs into Clarissa and Brian instead, and he ends up needing a new knee]].

* CoolOldLady: Grandma Lynn massively helps the family out in the aftermath of Susie's death and does her best to support everyone, especially Lindsey. Although, as she would say, "35 is not old! You've been sniffing too much of that nail polish!"

* DevilInPlainSight: Notwithstanding the possibility that he likely would have been sighted at some point while building his "clubhouse" (or, after the murder, while destroying it), Mr. Harvey engages in lots of ''very'' suspicious behavior that should have at the very least led the police to consider him as a suspect earlier in the investigation than they do.

%%* PhoneCallFromTheDead: Susie attempts this in Ruth's body.

%%* RearWindowInvestigation: What Lindsey ends up doing at George Harvey's house.

* TeenGenius: Lindsey and Ruth.

%%* {{Revenge}}: Jack's goal going into the cornfield [[spoiler: it doesn't work, and he ends up needing a new knee]].

%%* SnoopingLittleKid: Susie's sister, when she sneaks into the killer's house to find proof.

%%* TitleDrop: Before the epilogue.

* KarmicDeath: Literally.[[spoiler:After attempting and failing to ensnare another victim in an icy parking lot, Mr. Harvey is struck by a falling icicle and slips on the ice, plunging off a cliff to his death.]]

* IdiotBall: Susie herself post death realizes she dropped the ball when it came to gong along with Mr. Harvey, but Franny seems to know that happens a lot with the dead.

* KarmicDeath: Literally.[[spoiler: After attempting and failing to ensnare another victim in an icy parking lot, Mr. Harvey is struck by a falling icicle and slips on the ice, plunging off a cliff to his death.]]

* BittersweetEnding: The story ends about 10-11 years after Susie's murder. By then [[spoiler: Susie, her family, and her first love have accepted her death and moved on. Her family has also reconciled, deepened their bonds with each other and grown stronger as individuals. Minus some photographs, Susie's remaining possessions are donated, and her loved ones leave her in their memories, where Susie believes she was meant to be. Susie graduates to "wide wide Heaven", and only looks down at the Earth and her family sporadically. Lindsey and Samuel are married and have a child. Lindsey is a therapist, Ray is a doctor, and Ruth is trying to show everyone that the dead talk to the living. However, the safe containing Susie's body remains undiscovered in its sinkhole, and with the city considering filling it in, there is a chance it never will be. This means that Susie's family and friends may never be able have a proper funeral or even know what befell her in that underground den. Though her murderer is killed after falling into a ravine (an outcome which might have been caused by Susie), preventing him from creating more victims, he is also never taken to court for his crimes and can no longer reveal where he buried his victims. Also, since it takes several weeks for his body to be found in the snowdrift and Susie ascends to "wide wide Heaven" a few pages later (thus ending the story), we never learn if his body was positively identified. Though the cold may help preserve the body, Susie's loved ones may never know that her murderer is dead, and thus believe that he is still out there creating new victims and escaping justice.]] In real life cases such as these, a fully wrapped-up conclusion doesn't always happen. Bitter memories and new sweet ones will remain combined in the fallout. At the very least, in Susie's reality, her family had found a way to live on and in the end should be together again in the afterlife.

** Jack after his daughter's murder tries to investigate Mr. Harvey with what little he has, but fails to confirm him as the killer. The stress eventually breaks him, and he assaults someone who he mistook for Mr. Harvey

* AmbiguouslyBi: Ruth can come off as a little infatuated with Susie at times and expresses attraction towards woman. However, she also kisses Ray and even [[spoiler:allows Susie to possess her so she and Ray can have one night together.]] Neither Ruth nor the book one-hundred percent clarifies her sexuality.
* BikerBabe: Lindsey seems to have a phase as one. Her husband's brother runs a repair shop and she and Samuel ride home from graduation on them and she has a short hair cut at the time.
* BittersweetEnding: The story ends about 10-11 years after Susie's murder. By then [[spoiler: Susie, her family, and her first love have accepted her death and moved on. Her family has also reconciled, deepened their bonds with each other and grown stronger as individuals. Minus some photographs, Susie's remaining possessions are donated, and her loved ones leave her in their memories, where Susie believes she was meant to be. Susie graduates to "wide wide Heaven", and only looks down at the Earth and her family sporadically. Lindsey and Samuel are married and have a child. Lindsey is a therapist, Ray is a doctor, and Ruth is trying to show everyone that the dead talk to the living. However, the safe containing Susie's body remains undiscovered in its sinkhole, and with the city considering filling it in, there is a chance it never will be. This means that Susie's family and friends may never be able have a proper funeral or even know what befell her in that underground den. Though her murderer is killed after falling into a ravine (an outcome which might have been caused by Susie), preventing him from creating more victims, he also never is taken to court for his crimes and can no longer reveal where he buried his victims. Also, since it takes several weeks for his body to be found in the snowdrift and Susie ascends to "wide wide Heaven" a few pages later (thus ending the story), we never learn if his body was positively identified. Though the cold may help preserve the body, Susie's loved ones may never know that her murderer is dead, and thus believe that he is still out there creating new victims and escaping justice.]] In real life cases such as these a fully wrapped up conclusion doesn't always happen. Bitter memories and new sweet ones will remain combined in the fallout. At the very at least in Susie's reality her family had found a way to live on and in the end should unstated be together again in the afterlife.

** In the book it is the mention of the icicle. If Susie is narrating the story as we read it post her going to the bigger heaven then [[spoiler: her mentioning of it as her perfect weapon is her foreshadowing that will be the cause of death for her murderer]]
** Subverted in the case of Susie's charm bracelet. It's brought up enough times to feel significant, and Mr. Harvey left a charm from it with the body of another victim... but the people who find it in the landfill have no way of knowing its significance or who it belonged to. It's just something that was thrown away.

* ComingOfAgeStory: Not for Susie, who dies in the first chapter, but for her younger sister, whose development Susie watches. Over the course of the story, Susie endures the grief of losing her sister and deals with her fractured family in the fallout. She goes through a lot, but by the end she is married and has a child, and has healthily matured from her past trauma.
* CoolOldLady: Grandma Lynn massively helps the family out in the aftermath of Susie's death and does her best to support everyone, especially Lindsey. Although as she would say "35 is not old! You've been sniffing too much of that nail polish!"

* DeathByIrony: The eventual fate of Susie's killer? [[spoiler:Killed by an icicle that drops on him]]. There's an incident earlier in the book where Susie refers to the "perfect murder" game played in heaven. The weapon she always picks? [[spoiler:An icicle, because it melts away. Also consider that Susie might be narrating from the future to make that line a foreshadowing or later she mentions the ability to affect some things on Earth, (like Buckley's garden)]].

* DevilInPlainSight: Notwithstanding the possibility that he likely would have been sighted at some point while building his "clubhouse" (or, after the murder, while destroying it), Mr. Harvey engages in lots of ''very'' suspicious behavior that should have at the very least led the police to consider him as a suspect earlier in the investigation than they do. Jack is no better, naming just about every person he can think of who had any contact with Susie to the police before he starts suspecting Harvey. Justified in that the story takes place in the '70s, before people really believed this stuff could happen to anyone. As Susie notes early in the book.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: For kids in more rural or suburban areas with some open areas, the idea that kids regularly cut through a cornfield on their walks to and from school isn't an unusual choice. To more urban and developed readers, this comes off as a WhatAnIdiot thing to do.

* AfterlifeAntechamber: Susie's heaven.
* AgeLift: Given the time shift, a lot of characters grow older as the story goes on.

* AmateurSleuth: Jack after his daughter's murder.

* CassandraTruth:
** Hardly anyone ever believes Jack. At all.
*** Averted by Holiday the EvilDetectingDog that growls when they get to Harvey's house.
*** Lindsey and Grandma Lynn aren't entirely opposed to Jack's belief that Mr Harvey killed Susie. Lindsey even breaks into his house to find evidence.
* ChekhovsGun: In the book it is the mention of the icicle. If Susie is narrating the story as we read it post her going to the bigger heaven then [[spoiler: her mentioning of it as her perfect weapon is her foreshadowing that will be the cause of death for her murderer]]

* ComingOfAgeStory: Played with by having the main character ''die'' first.
** To a lesser extent we get to see along with Susie the growing into an adult of her younger sister. Sex experiences and all.
* CoolOldLady: Grandma Lynn. Although as she would say "35 is not old! You've been sniffing too much of that nail polish!"

* DeadPersonConversation: [[spoiler: This happens with Susie and Ray, more so in the novel.]]

* DeadToBeginWith: The story is partly set in and fully told from [[spoiler:Susie's afterlife]].

* TheDeterminator: Jack.
* DevilInPlainSight: Notwithstanding the possibility that he likely would have been sighted at some point while building his "clubhouse" (or, after the murder, while destroying it), Mr. Harvey engages in lots of ''very'' suspicious behavior that should have at the very least led the police to consider him as a suspect earlier in the investigation than they do. Jack is no better, naming just about every person he can think of who had any contact with Susie to the police before he starts suspecting Harvey.
** JustifiedTrope: The story takes place in the '70s, before people really believed this stuff could happen to anyone. As Susie notes early in the book.
** Another justification can come from the setting; unpatrolled cornfields can vary in structure but it's quite easy for humans and other animals to be able to sneak around in them unnoticed. In later chapters while it's Clarissa's light and Jack's yelling that give them away, Harvey is very much perfectly hidden.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: A level of it appears as the book's concept of Heaven. Susie has to accept her death and move on to get into bigger Heaven, even though apparently that doesn't mean completely giving up on watching the living. But until the dead do that, they are just going to stay in the little bubble of simple desires.

* HardDrinkingPartyGirl: Grandma.
* [[HerHeartWillGoOn His Heart Will Go On]]: Ray.

* IHaveNoSon: Played with in a tear jerking fashion, when Abigail is asked if she has children, she mentions she has two and in her mind silently corrects herself that she had three.
** As well as an unstated I have no best friend. Susie applies this to her [[spoiler: best friend Clarissa]] after she: [[spoiler: 1) Grieves relatively little over her best friend's death, and except for an unspoken PetTheDog moment with Lindsey at Susie's memorial service, does not help her family cope with her death or maintain a relationship with them. 2) Is partially responsible for putting Susie's father in the hospital with serious injuries, and allowing damaging rumors to circulate that leave him emotionally crippled for months. And 3) When Susie realizes (unconsciously) that the best friend she looked up to is not as great a person as she thought.]] Shortly after Susie's [[spoiler: father ends up in the hospital, Clarissa]] is not seen or mentioned again for the rest of book.

* ISeeDeadPeople: [[spoiler: Ruth after Susie touches her shoulder on her way to heaven]].
** She also has a vision of the dead victims and animals following Mr. Harvey's car.
** And spies one during her time in New York.

** Possibly more of a ChekhovsGun in the book. Susie's narration in text form is more than likely coming post her knowing about the death. So her mentioning of the weapon that kills him earlier in the book as her pick for the perfect murder weapon may be more a foreshadow then it is indication she was involved.
* LadyDrunk: Grandma Lynn.

* MundaneAfterlife: Susie's heaven is mostly just nice things from her life.
** Subverted at the end of the novel when [[spoiler: she learns to accept her death along with the rest of her family and she moves on to the next tier of heaven that is described as very beautiful, more so than she can describe]].
* NearDeathClairvoyance: Susie does this.

* OurGhostsAreDifferent: In addition to below, the book has the dead able to see and "hover" over the living as Susie says but at times they can break through and the living can see them in form or their image. Why or how it does sometimes and not others is not ever really addressed.
** Susie herself sees Harvey's other victims taking up space when she watches her sister break in, implying they too are hovering watching, but Susie doesn't seem to actually "meet" them until a later scene in Heaven at a tree.

* ParentalSubstitute: Due to the above-mentioned ParentalAbandonment and his father's fragile condition, Lynn and Hal help raise Buckley.

* PastimesProvePersonality

* PhoneCallFromTheDead: Susie attempts this in Ruth's body.

* PosthumousNarration: Susie narrates from the point of being dead.
** While Susie is young, it is worth remembering that sometimes she jumps around and comes back to smaller memories outside of the linear narration following her death. This doesn't really present her as a UnreliableNarrator, but is important to remember.

* RapeAsDrama: In the novel, Susie is raped before she is murdered, and it's [[{{Squick}} described in graphic detail]].

* RearWindowInvestigation: What Lindsey ends up doing at George Harvey's house.

* {{Revenge}}: Jack's goal going into the cornfield [[spoiler: it doesn't work, and he ends up needing a new knee]].
* SerialKiller: Mr. Harvey.

* ShoutOut: Holly, Susie's roommate in Heaven doesn't reveal her real name but Holly she uses as a reference to Film/BreakfastAtTiffanys

* ShrineToTheFallen: Western Version- Susie's room originally is this to the family, Susie even describes it as such. This is later altered as Grandma Lynn moves in.
* SnoopingLittleKid: Susie's sister, when she sneaks into the killer's house to find proof.

* TitleDrop: Before the epilogue.