Lovely Movie

This week I just found out that the novel Lovely Bones will be made into a feature film. It was supposed to be released in March 2008, but due to complications, it was rescheduled to December 2009. My friends and I will be seeing it, hoping that it meets the standards that the best-selling novel did. Peter Jackson directed the film, since he did a terrific job on the Lord of the Ring Trilogy novels, everyone will be expecting this movie to have the same impact. Saoirse Ronan stars as Susie Salmon, and Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz as her parents.

The Impact of the Truth

If there was anything that was different in The Da Vinci Code, the effect would not have been as influence. What made the book so captivating was the partial truth to it. Without it, people would have just seen it as another book left on the shelf. The reason it was a successful novel was not because Dan Brown knew the whole truth about the secret in Mona Lisa's smile. It was because he knew how to make his readers think, and knew what they could possibly think of. He is a skillful exploiter of the truth. Preparing the book with interesting facts, readers start to believe everything the author says.

Confusion from the Author

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, a fictional novel, was written in a factual means. Brown took controversial topics like religion and myth and created a literary masterpiece. The author used actual organizations, places, and even some actual names. He also created fictional characters and places, but made no attempt to allow them to appear. Although the facts used in this book was misinterpreted, it played an important role in distracting the reader's attention away from their own thoughts and onto those of the author.

A Historical Story

The Da Vinci Code was different than books that I usually take the time to read. I was lucky enough to have the version of the novel that had pictures and explanations of the historical objects used in the story. If I did not have that, I would have lost with all these Parisian artifacts. All the mysteries and the solutions that come from it are so suspenseful that I did not want to stop reading. There were stories and myths on religion predominately.

A Puzzling Story

Another interesting novel to read was the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. The main character, Robert Langdon is the professor of religious symbology at Harvard University. He tries to attempt to solve the murder of the renowned curator Jacques Sauniere of the Louvre museum in France. Near the curator’s body was a perplexing code found. The curator’s granddaughter and Langdon attempt to decipher the strange riddles and are surprised to find a path of clues hidden by the efforts of the artist, Leonardo Da Vinci. Brain teaser and number puzzles were involved. The last, most thought-provoking challenge was finding the Holy Grail.

Lovely Bones Reflection

Novels like this make the reader think about someone who actually suffered through trauma like this. It is sad to think that no matter when one reads this novel there will probably be a child missing in the news and a family trying to adjust to the new horror in their lives. I researched information on the author, Alice Sebold and she was brutally raped as an 18 year old. The inspiration for the story came from her personal experience. It is not that The Lovely Bones makes light of this kind of tragedy, but it does bring some healthy insight into the role of death in our lives.

Personal Opinion of Lovely Bones

It was Susie’s insight from heaven that made me love reading this novel, since it was a different approach to a novel. She sees how her murderer lives, and how her family coped without her. But it's watching her family and friends as they begin to heal where the heart of the story lies. She's there when her father realizes that the immortality that should have come with bearing three children was not as assured as he thought; and he reacts by pouring his love into the living. Since Susie was only 14 years old, I expected another kind of tone to this novel. But Susie Salmon is not sad, angry, or bitter. Instead she is a mix of curiosity and hope about the people still on Earth. The Lovely Bones is about Susie watching her family and friends heal and finding their way back to being connected with one another. It is about restoration of a family after it is devastated.