"The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold
Had heard a lot about this a while back and wanted to pick this up and read ... there was even a movie recently based on this book ... that reminded me to get this one . But the theme somehow put me off after buying the book and took a lot of effort to finally get started. However once I started it was a pretty neat read especially because of unique plot device - narration by a dead central character. This is story of Susie Salmon, a young girl who gets gruesomely raped and murdered in her neighborhood and her body is disposed off where no one can find her. The story is narrated by her spirit watching over her parents , school friends , neighbors and also her killer over a period of time . Susie Salmon watches her family/friends slowly come to grips with reality that their missing daughter/friend may never come back again . As Susie watches from above the once picture perfect family struggles to recover from the loss and move in different directions affecting each others lives and bonds of family get stretched. Its about relationships and coping with loss and its also about love and its power to heal wounds. Everyone affected by this loss deals with it in their own way , but in someway or other they heal and get back.
Young Susie is not sad or bitter but hopeful and optimistic and eager to know how people are doing and progressing in life and wishes they all move on , even though she herself will never be able to experience things people down below are experiencing. Inspite of a little surprising and a tad romantic ending this was a nice read. A significant departure from the kind of books I usually read , but this was worth it !
"Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger
I picked this one up as I had simply loved this author's previous book "The Time Traveller's Wife" which was a great read as was a about a character which took on the concept of time. Here once again Niffenegger is on similar territory as concept of life and death is re-examined/challenged this time.
Valentine and Julia Poole are 20 year old symmetric twins , they are identical and are in fact mirror images of each other .They suddenly inherit a big house in England overlooking Highland Cemetery from their recently deceased Aunt Elspeth who is buried in the same cemetery. But the condition for twins getting the house is that they should live for 1 year in the house and their mother (Aunt Elspeth's identical twin sister) and their father should not set foot in the house. As twins move from US to Britain , they enter a world of mysteries and dark secrets.They also meet a few eccentric neighbors including the enigmatic Robert who is working on his thesis on Highland cemetery and also happens to be their late Aunt's young lover. As one twin falls for Robert against the wishes of the other , cracks start appearing between the 'perfect' symmetric twins . In addition to all this Elspeth manages to return as ghost to her house and makes contact with her nieces . There is a delightful subplot involving another neighbor - Martin , who sets crossword puzzles for newspaper but whose life itself is a puzzle as he suffers from OCD and cannot leave his house and hence struggles to get in touch with world outside the house where the love of his life resides . Meanwhile Elspeth's ghost also goes through the same problem as she is bound to the house where the twins nows reside while she desires to move on and get close to Robert , who was the love of her life .Overall it seems a good place to lose one's mind and thats exactly what happens . What unravels is a shocking tale of love turning into obsession and degenerating into madness as the boundaries between life and death blur. The Highland Cemetery provides a great setting for this nice ghost story and it is described very well and almost feels like a character in the plot !
