I had just started buying YA for Borders when The Lovely Bones was published. The main character in Sebold's novel is just 14, and as the story is told from her point of view, I had quite a few people ask me why the novel was shelved in adult and not YA. My response to this question was that The Lovely Bones was without hope, and that I believed that children's literature for all ages had to have a hopeful component. This doesn't mean that I believe all children's novels should have happy endings, but it does mean that I think kids' books should at least provide some sort of lesson. For instance Ellen Hopkins' Crank is as dark a novel as any I've read, but the reader certainly grasps at the end of this cautionary tale that drugs are bad and will ruin your life. This is not the case with Living Dead Girl. There is no lesson to be learned from this novel. The main character's only crime is that she fights with her friends over her new cream soda lip gloss.
Alice is just 10-years-old when she is abducted by Ray during a school field trip. Now 15, she has spent the last 5 years being physically and mentally abused. As Alice becomes less and less the little girl that Ray desires to have as his own, he dictates that she find him a new, younger, more perfect girl. Could this be the release that Alice has prayed for, or is it the last step to losing her soul?
I wanted to blame Alice for her abduction. Shouldn't she know better than to go off with strangers? Then I would remember that Alice at 15 would know this, but Alice at 10 thought Ray worked at the aquarium, and she had been hurt by her friends. She was vulnerable, and that's exactly how I felt after reading this novel. I felt tense and vulnerable, like it would be easy to become a shut-in and never trust another person again. Yet, there is a glimpse of redemption in this novel. Alice has suffered irreparable damage, but when the opportunity arises for her to pass on the pain to another young girl, she doesn't do it. There is no happy ending for Alice, but she does allow another little girl to have the possibility of one. So while I'm not sure that this book should be shelved in YA, Alice still has her humanity at the end of the novel, making her an acutely moving and hopeful character.
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