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In June 2002, her first novel, The Lovely Bones, was published. This book defeated many bestselling books as soon as it came out, and spent thirty weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. It was chosen as the recommended book by American Monthly Book Club, and won the “American Notable Books of the Year”. The Lovely Bones won the second place in the list of “twenty best books of 2002” which was chosen by the French magazine Reading. What’s more, Alice Sebold also won the American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award for Adult Fiction in 2003 for The Lovely Bones and the Bram Stoker Award in 2002. Later, Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings, was moved by this warm and amazing story and decided to adapt it into a film. The film was released in 2010. 源:自*751~·论,文'网·www.751com.cn/
The Lonely Bones has a horrible beginning, but it’s not a horror novel. The main character is Susie, a fourteen-year-old girl. When she took shortcut home from school, she met her neighbor, George Harvey. Harvey persuaded her to look at his underground dollhouse in the cornfield. Finally Susie entered and unfortunately Harvey raped and murdered her, even dismembered her body. The story is narrated from the view of Susie, and she recalls the life before she is murdered, as a ghost. Although Susie was dead, she’s never gone. She watched from personal heaven as her family and friends struggle to move on with their lives and observed the cold-blooded killer who finally got punished. The book begins with horror, but closes with beauty.
2. Literature Review
The publication of The Lovely Bones caused a huge sensation. It was known for the unusual plot and unconventional narrative device. In addition, Critics also helped the novel’s success by being generally positive. In foreign countries, there are many studies on this book. Raghav Rajagopalan seeks to consider this popular novel from a perspective about systemicity. His concern is with the plausibility of transmission of cybernetic ideas and systemic knowledge in popular cultures through practical and symbolic means, rather than explicit conceptual discussion. (2013:175) In Sarah Whitney’s paper, she thinks the posthumous narrative of The Lovely Bones addresses the “victim/agent” debate within postfeminist discourse while dissipating rage over the heroine’s rape and murder through a variety of textual strategies, and the novel succeeds in exploring the difficulty of writing about gendered violence and reveal tensions within postfeminist ideology. (2010: 351-357) In addition, Roxanne Harde takes the book as an example in order to analyze feminist literary theory and women’s writing. (2011: 60)
Some Chinese scholars have also paid more attention to this novel. The scholar Wan Huirong sings high praise for the unique narrative method of the novel. She studies from three parts: Anachronism in narration, the first-person dual narration and unique narrative perspective. (2012: 121-123) In Wang Hongying’s thesis, he discusses the deep meaning of the title from the aspects of how the living faces Susie’s death and how Susie faces her own death. (2013: 52)Another scholar Zhen Lei analyzes the book from American culture and history. She puts her emphasis on the raped girl in order to warn the society to care more about the weaker girls. (2013: 111)
A Chinese scholar Pan Haihui once took the film The Lovely Bones as an example to study the use of image in the film, but it is not faithful to the original work. This thesis is based on the original novel, and analyzes the novel in details and more deeply from the perspective of image. 文献综述
As an important component of literary works, the images can represent unspeakable experiences and emotions and be objects mixed with some of the author’s thoughts and feelings, and display human’s experiences in emotions, mind, etc. It is an amalgamation of objective world and subjective world, and harmonious unification of feelings and scenes. (Zhang Li, 2013: 92) Image can be classified as four main categories: visual image, auditory image, tactile image and abstract image. The bracelet, icicle, ships in bottles and houses are all objective things. When Alice Sebold focused on describing them in this novel, they were endowed with some emotion, atmosphere and the fates of characters. The basic elements of a novel are environments, characters and plots. Image is not the independent element of a novel, but it is the component of environments, characters and plots. That a novel can still exist without images just shows the special functions of image.