The setting is important to our understanding of this novel as it links to the narrative voice, illustrating the fact that Susie is the loneliest of all the characters. This is shown through Sebold’s use of Susie to describe in detail each character and event on Earth compared to the very brief descriptions of events in heaven, showing where Susie would rather be and whom she wants to be with. Here, “life is perpetual yesterday” and Susie relates the awful events of her death and her own adjustment to the strange new place she finds herself. For example, heaven itself is the setting of her old school playground, with swings and only the lessons that she enjoyed are taught at school. With the help of Susie’s love and longing, we have a growing understanding of the Salmon family as it is made possible to build opinions and to judge the characters of the Salmon family, especially Susie’s mother and father.
When Susie’s mother leaves the family, the use of Susie as the narrator is vital to keep the story focusing on both Abigail and the rest of the family. This manipulates the reader into starting to dislike Abigail for splitting up an already damaged family and leaving her children behind. Throughout the novel we see Susie seeing her mother in a different way to before, “ she was at that point not my mother but something I found frightening…[her eyes] were bottomless in a way that I found frightening.”
Through the use of narrative voice, Sebold allows us to become aware of Susie’s feelings about her mother helping us make our own personal opinions of her and deciding on the reasons for her leaving.
In contrast to Mrs Salmon, Mr Salmon is not disliked by the reader at any one point in this novel. At the beginning he is caring towards his daughter, giving her advice and sharing his knowledge with her. For example, when looking at a snow dome of Susie’s he tells her not to worry, “ he has a nice life. He's trapped in a perfect world.” We feel sorry for him when his wife begins to drift away from him during Susie’s disappearance and through Susie’s clear affection for him we too begin to prefer him to Abigail. BY using narrative voice, Susie’s love for her father is shown and reflected on our opinion of him also.
Susie controls the narrative flow and often speaks to the reader directly, acknowledging that it is a story being told in a book "Don't think that every person you meet in here is a suspect," she says in the opening paragraphs. Although Susie's voice never exposes itself more than a calm peacefulness, her story of what has happened before and what is to occur motivates a passionate desire to know what is to happen to those left behind – Susie’s parents and siblings. Susie’s subtle delight in her growing ability to influence things from heaven raises hope that she will be able to fully appreciate her desire to bring peace to her family, who seem permanently broken as the disturbance of her unexpected disappearance and death puts lethal pressure on already fragile relationships. This is demonstrated further when Susie’s parents part. Through Sebold’s use of the central character’s thoughts and opinions explained from heaven, the full story can be revealed to us, allowing a fair opinion of each character to be made.
By using an omniscient narrator, Sebold opens up the whole plot as Susie can witness all events, including events that other characters often do not notice. This allows the story to focus on any character at any moment and on events where there is no character. This also makes Susie very reliable as she is not involved in the action taking place on Earth, she merely sees it take places and narrates it to us. She also offers judgments and opinions on the behavior of the people she has left behind her and how they have changed, allowing us too to make opinions and see the characters for their true selves after the loss of Susie.
In conclusion, Alice Sebold’s effective use of an unusual narrative voice in “the Lovely Bones” results in an the manipulation of the reader into making opinions and judgements of central characters, including Mr and Mrs Salmon. By using an omniscient narrator, the story is opened up allowing us to follow the action as it takes place in different parts of America when Abigail moves away.