The Lovely Bones

George Harvey is a 36-year-old single man and serial killer of young women and girls. George leads a regimented life and is adept at weaponizing his “oddness” to divert suspicion away from himself. The police investigate him several times and conclude that while he might be strange, he doesn’t seem like a killer. Furthermore, whenever people visit his house, his obvious loneliness and strange rituals distract them, leading them to miss crucial clues. Similarly, Susie feels uncomfortable around Harvey but accompanies him to the secret room because her parents taught her to obey adults.

Harvey represents the cycle of construction and destruction, as well as a toxic way of processing grief. Susie learns that Harvey had an abusive and turbulent childhood: His father abused him, and his mother used him as an accomplice to commit petty crimes. Later, he witnessed his father abandon his mother on the side of a road, and he has only her amber pendant to remember her by. He then takes similar trophies from his victims, which he uses like rosary beads. George’s father also taught him construction, which he uses to build elaborate locations to murder his victims in. At a young age, Harvey learns firsthand that the worst things to be in the world are women or children. Instead of using this realization to build a better world, he uses his relative privilege to kill young women and destroy their families. Unlike the other characters, whose connections to each other come to define them, Harvey deliberately isolates himself from others and spends much of his time alone.

Although the police are eventually able to link Harvey to Susie’s murder, as well as several others, they never apprehend him. Instead, he dies after a falling icicle causes him to lose his balance and fall down a ravine while he is stalking a new victim. The novel’s ending is deliberately ambiguous as to whether Susie caused his accident, but Harvey’s death allows Susie and Harvey’s other victims to experience closure, knowing that he can never hurt anyone else.

Lindsey Salmon is Susie’s younger sister (by one year) and a primary protagonist of the novel. Unlike the more average Susie, Lindsey is highly intelligent (she attends a gifted student camp every summer) and a talented athlete (she tries out for the all-boys soccer team in high school). After Susie’s death, Lindsey experiences what she calls “walking dead syndrome” where others (including herself) see Susie instead of her. The one exception to this is Samuel, who turns out to be her true love. Susie’s death forces Lindsey to grow up prematurely, as she becomes more independent and must take on some parental responsibilities. Later, she breaks into Harvey’s house, where she finds evidence linking him to Susie’s murder. 

Lindsey represents possibility to Susie, as Susie lives vicariously through Lindsey’s various coming-of-age moments. Susie watches as Lindsey has her first kiss, loses her virginity, graduates high school and university, gets married, and becomes a mother herself. 

Ruth Connors is a classmate of Susie’s. Although they were not close in life, they become intimately connected when Susie’s soul touches Ruth as it ascends to the afterlife after her death. Ruth is an unathletic and bookish social outcast but a talented artist and poet who writes poems about Susie after her death. Ruth has a skittery rabbit energy that makes people nervous, and her intelligence and artistic ability cause friction with her teachers. While nurturing her connection with Susie, she becomes drawn to Susie’s crush, Ray Singh, and the two form a lasting and close friendship. The narrative strongly implies that Ruth is sexually attracted to other women, but aside from her “experiments” with Ray, nothing is shown of her romantic life.

To Susie, Ruth represents someone keeping her memory and spirit alive after her death. After Susie’s spirit touches Ruth, she cultivates her second sight and can perceive the deaths of other women and children. She moves from the suburbs to NYC after graduating high school. There, she works in a bar and spends her free time walking the streets and writing down her visions in her journal, her most treasured possession. Ruth becomes a sort of living memory, not just of Susie, but of all the forgotten women and children who experienced violent ends.

Jack Salmon is Susie’s father and the family member who takes Susie’s death the hardest. Jack feels intense guilt over not being able to protect Susie, and he externalizes this guilt by starting his own investigation. Although he has no evidence besides his own intuition, he (correctly) suspects that Harvey is her murderer. Jack knows he should focus his love and attention on his surviving children and move on from Susie’s death, yet he finds himself unable to, and instead fixates on “solving” her murder. This obsession leads to several negative consequences: His performance suffers at work; he receives a beating in the cornfield; Abigail begins cheating on him and later leaves the family; and Buckley resents how Jack monopolizes Susie’s memory, leading to his heart attack. Yet despite everything, Jack continues surviving, and by the end of the novel, he is finally able to accept Susie’s death and move on.

Jack demonstrates the destructive effects of Susie’s murder on the family. In particular, the traditional suburban family roles become destabilized after Susie’s death. Abigail withdraws from the family, while Jack takes on more of a loving mother role. At the same time, Jack’s emotional fragility lead both Lindsey and Buckley to treat him like a child at times to protect him from his grief and guilt over Susie’s death. Later, Grandma Lynn moves into the family’s home to help Jack with raising the children and taking care of the household.

Abigail Salmon is Susie’s mother, and she struggles with reconciling the various facets of her identity after Susie’s death. The other characters frequently compare her to the ocean, particularly Abigail’s eyes. She has an MA in English and dreamed of being a teacher, but she put these dreams on hold when she got married and had Susie and Lindsey. She still dreamed of pursuing a career as a teacher, but her dreams are crushed after she becomes unexpectedly pregnant with Buckley. This causes her to bury her true self beneath a façade of motherhood. Susie only sees Abigail’s true self once, when she secretly captures her mother in a photograph.

After Susie’s death and Jack’s hospitalization, Abigail begins an affair with Detective Fenerman; she uses sex as an attempt to drive out the memory of Susie. She later moves to California and works at a winery to escape how her identity has become bound up with motherhood. Abigail considers herself to be “punished” for never wanting to be a mother. After Jack’s heart attack, she finally returns to Norristown. Although she only intends to stay a short time, she winds up reconciling with her family and staying with them.

Buckley Salmon is Susie’s youngest brother who is 4 at the time of her murder. Because of his tender age, the family attempts to shelter Buckley from the news of Susie’s death. As a result, he has trouble understanding why she is gone. However, after Abigail’s departure, Buckley must grow up very quickly, and he becomes “the man of the house.” He honors Susie’s memory by building a fort (which the two planned to do) and taking up gardening. He has an argument with Jack, whom he considers to be monopolizing Susie’s memory and denying his ability to grieve her in his own way. This argument leads to Jack’s heart attack, which Buckley feels intense guilt over. When Abigail returns, Buckley has grown resentful over her leaving the family and refuses to look at or speak to her.

Grandma Lynn is Susie’s grandmother and Abigail’s mother. Lynn is an eccentric alcoholic, and at the beginning of the novel, Abigail has pursued what she calls a “scorched earth” policy towards her mother, cutting Lynn out of their family life. Lynn returns to the Salmons for Susie’s memorial, where she serves as a beacon of light at their darkest moment. She gives Lindsey and Abigail makeovers and convinces Jack to have a good time; their impromptu party is the first happy moment the family has since Susie’s death. After Abigail leaves the family, Lynn moves into Susie’s room (which has remained untouched) and helps Jack raise Buckley and take care of the household. Despite her many flaws, Lynn’s positive energy helps the family cope in the absence of Susie, and later Abigail.